Rochelle Screen v Matt Screen Pet Services Ltd t/a Waggy Walks — 2025

On a reserved judgment, the Tribunal (Employment Judge Corrigan sitting alone) found that the claimant was an employee of the respondent. Her claim for unlawful deduction of wages succeeded; the wages paid to her between March and 13 June 2024 were less than the wages properly payable. The Tribunal found that she was both unfairly dismissed (by way of constructive dismissal arising from the respondent's failure to pay her and to interact with her about that, breaching the implied term of trust and confidence) and wrongfully dismissed; the respondent did not pay her accrued holiday pay on termination of employment.

Quantum has not yet been assessed. A remedy hearing will be needed to decide the rate at which losses should be calculated (in particular whether the National Minimum Wage should be taken into account given that the claimant had been paid £1,000 per month for what she said was around 80 hours' work per week), the issue of contributory conduct (the claimant had taken steps including diverting client payments and putting the field lease into her own name once she discovered she did not own 50% of the business), the basic award, the holiday pay calculation and any uplift for failure to provide written terms.

The published text was truncated; no quantified award appears in the available portion.

Source tags (gov.uk)

• Breach of Contract
• Unfair Dismissal
• Unlawful Deduction from Wages and Working Time Regulations

• section 98 Employment Rights Act 1996
• implied term of trust and confidence
• ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures
• National Minimum Wage

The full judgment is available on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

• Judgment 1 (PDF) ↗
• Judgment 2 (PDF) ↗