- IN PERSON FOR THE v - Ms S Cooper Gadd (in House Legal Counsel) Interpreter (polish) Ms J Galka — 2025

The claimant proceeded only with an unlawful deduction from wages claim and a breach of contract claim after withdrawing other matters at the case management stage. He said he had been underpaid for June 2024, while the respondent accepted that it owed him money once it checked its records after receiving the ET1. The tribunal sat alone and heard limited factual dispute on the wages issue.

The unlawful deduction from wages claim succeeded. The claimant had been paid £1,049.38 for June 2024 against a normal salary of £2,224.20. The respondent explained that deductions had been made for sickness absence, but later accepted that full pay should have been restored for the claimant’s absence from 3 June 2024 to 17 July 2024 after his suspension following the 21 May 2024 search. The tribunal found that the July payroll only corrected the OES bonus element and not the basic pay, leaving £970.59 gross unpaid, and ordered the respondent to pay that sum.

The breach of contract claim was dismissed. The claimant accepted that the search policy was non-contractual and relied instead on the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, contending that the respondent had failed to follow its own search procedures during the 21 May 2024 wallet search. The tribunal held that the policy expressly stated it did not form part of the contract of employment and found no breach in the alleged failures to give a reason for the search, to conduct it in private, to question the claimant about his wallet in private, or to use CCTV. It noted that the policy allowed searches not to be private in some circumstances and that the CCTV provision applied to physical searches rather than the property search at issue, so it did not need to decide the jurisdictional points raised about the contract claim.