Mrs M Muti v Ocean Fish (Retail) Limited RECORD OF A PRELIMINARY HEARING — 2025

This was a preliminary hearing before Employment Judge Volkmer at Bodmin on 8 December 2025 to determine the Claimant's application to strike out the Response and the Respondent's application for a deposit order. The Claimant's strike out application was dismissed. The Respondent's deposit order application was granted only in relation to the allegation that the Respondent failed to pay the Claimant for time off to attend midwife appointments on 12, 14 and 28 June 2024, which the Judge found had little reasonable prospect of success; the remaining parts of the deposit order application were dismissed.

That allegation has been pleaded under three heads of claim: pregnancy and maternity discrimination, harassment related to sex, and unlawful deduction from wages. The Judge concluded, on the basis of clocking-in records and matching payslips, that there was little reasonable prospect the Claimant would establish she was not paid for the appointments on those dates. Given the Claimant's extremely limited financial means (£1,000 per month in benefits, £800 rent), the deposit was set at £1 per allegation, so £3 in total if the Claimant wished to pursue the allegation under all three heads.

The Judge declined to make deposit orders on time-limit grounds or in relation to the wider claims, finding that issues such as the effective date of termination, whether it was not reasonably practicable to present the claim in time, and whether there was conduct extending over a period could not be determined without testing the evidence. The substantive claims accordingly proceed to a final hearing.