How much compensation do unlawful deduction from wages claims award at an employment tribunal?

Across 15,319 UK unlawful deduction from wages tribunal cases with a recorded remedy since 2017, the median total award was £2,385 and the largest was £3,449,329.

What percentage of unlawful deduction from wages claims succeed at an employment tribunal?

Of 20,985 unlawful deduction from wages claims decided on the merits by UK tribunals, 76% were upheld.

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Unlawful deduction from wages compensation & tribunal success rate — UK data (page 713) | Tribunal Watch

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Unlawful deduction from wages employment tribunal cases — UK data 2017–present

Name: Unlawful deduction from wages UK employment tribunal statistics
Creator: Tribunal Watch
License: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Tribunal Watch has indexed 36,988 UK employment tribunal cases involving unlawful deduction from wages claims, published on gov.uk since 2017. Where compensation was recorded, the median award was £2,385 (the largest £3,449,329) across 15,319 cases. Tribunals upheld 76% of the 20,985 decided unlawful deduction from wages claims. These cases name 28,663 distinct employers as respondents.

Total cases: 36,988
Median award: £2,385
Claims upheld: 76%
Largest single award: £3,449,329
Distinct employers: 28,663
England & Wales: 32,339
Scotland: 4,649

Compensation in unlawful deduction from wages cases

15,319 cases with a recorded award

Median: £2,385
Mean: £6,862
25th percentile: £967
75th percentile: £6,336
90th percentile: £15,380
Largest: £3,449,329

Figures are the total award recorded across cases that include a unlawful deduction from wages claim and a published remedy — 15,319 of 36,988 unlawful deduction from wages cases. Many tribunal judgments decide liability only, with compensation set at a later hearing, so they are not counted here. A judgment combining several claim types contributes its whole award. Nothing here is legal advice or a prediction of any individual outcome.

Outcomes of unlawful deduction from wages claims

25,875 adjudicated claims

Outcome	Claims	Share
Upheld	15,936	62%
Dismissed	5,049	20%
Struck out	2,086	8%
Withdrawn	2,051	8%
Other	552	2%
Settled	201	1%

Counting only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed), 76% of unlawful deduction from wages claims were upheld — 15,936 of 20,985. Settled and withdrawn claims are excluded from that rate. Outcomes are recorded per claim, so a judgment can uphold one claim and dismiss another.

Unlawful deduction from wages cases per year

2017–2026

Year	Cases	Trend
2017	403
2018	672
2019	4,550
2020	6,663
2021	4,863
2022	4,992
2023	4,865
2024	4,284
2025	3,736
2026	1,960

Largest unlawful deduction from wages awards

Top 8 by total award

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Total award
1404855/2018	5 June 2019	In person For the	University of Southampton	£3,449,329
1403379/2024	29 May 2025	Ms Herbert (in person) For the Second Claimant Ms Orimolade (in person) For the	Tech	£2,083,333
2202223/2019	5 November 2019	Mrs J Marsan	Big Marcel Ltd	£423,868
3304188/2022	28 July 2023	Cyril Gregory	Petro Trace Limited	£340,213
2204168/2021	23 June 2022	Elle Kim	Finablr Ltd	£279,566
3320831/2021	30 November 2022	Mr Joh Murphy	Remus Corporation UK Limited (in compulsory liquidation)	£234,410
3305627/2024	6 August 2025	Mr Richard Cooke	Seven Resourcing Limited	£229,119
2414266/2021	7 March 2022	Mrs N Denmade and others (see schedule)	Trinity Brands UK Ltd	£219,664

Top employers — unlawful deduction from wages cases

20 ranked by case count

#	Employer	Cases
01	Kent County Council,	179
02	Falkirk Council	151
03	Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy	135
04	DHL Services Limited	122
05	Royal Mail Group Limited	119
06	Midlothian Council	118
07	Clarity Products Limited	110
08	South Lanarkshire Council	104
09	Secretary of State for Business & Trade	93
10	The City of Edinburgh Council	87
11	Asda Stores Limited	77
12	Tesco Stores Ltd	68
13	Aberdeen City Council	63
14	Mitie Limited

All unlawful deduction from wages cases

36,988 cases · page 713 of 740 · chronological

Case ref.	Decided	Claimant	Primary respondent	Jurisdiction	Total award
2202972/2019	15 March 2019	Mr J Kidane Zegay	Mr B Boylan	England & Wales	—
3300257/2017	15 March 2019	In person For the	—	England & Wales	—
1806868/2018	15 March 2019	Mrs W Lynch	HELP-LINK UK Ltd	England & Wales	—
2204853/2018	15 March 2019	Mr. D. Godfrey, Camden Community Law Centre For the	—	England & Wales	—
2602760/2018	15 March 2019	Mrs C Todd	Jay And Jayne Wittam	England & Wales	—
4101469/2019	15 March 2019	16 A (Scot) Rule judgment template (simple) EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: 4101469/2019 Mr Ronald Gallacher	Colin’s Tyres	Scotland	£1,097
4100229/2019	14 March 2019	EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND) Case No: 4100229/2019 Mr J Daniels	Colin’s Tyres	Scotland	£2,951
2302094/2018	14 March 2019	Mr M Graysmark	Moving On Care Management Ltd

Methodology

Cases on this page are identified by first-pass extraction against the locked §4.4 claim-type taxonomy — a judgment enters the unlawful deduction from wages caseload if unlawful deduction from wagesis tagged in its classification output. A single judgment frequently combines multiple claim types, so the same case may appear on more than one claim-type page. Per-claim outcomes come from the second-pass (LLM-assisted) extraction and are recorded for each claim a judgment decides; the success rate counts only claims a tribunal decided on the merits (upheld or dismissed). Award figures are taken from the remedy section of each judgment where present; cases without a quantified award — because the tribunal only determined liability, or because the remedy hearing is pending — are excluded from the compensation figures. Regional splits follow the tribunal's jurisdiction as recorded on gov.uk. Nothing on this page is legal advice or a prediction of any outcome; for any specific matter the gov.uk judgment PDF linked from each case page is the authoritative source.