United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT
For the Respondent	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENT


 


JUDGE HULL QC: In this case neither of the parties attends before us today. It is a case in which Miss Allen, the Respondent to the appeal, made a complaint to the Industrial Tribunal that there had been an unauthorised deduction from her pay.

The history of her employment was short. She was first employed on 4 June 1996 as a Tele-Sales person by the Appellants: there is a letter of appointment with our papers. She actually entered the employment on 10 June and the effective date of termination was on 19 July, as the Industrial Tribunal found.

Miss Allen was claiming arrears of pay and in the IT3, the answer which the employers put in, they said, among other things, that they did not know how much to deduct from her pay and they then went on to say:

"..... Furthermore she took a weeks holiday in July to which she was not entitled to be paid for upon termination of her employment ....."

They then said that the hearing date was inconvenient to them but nonetheless, the Chairman of Tribunals thought it right to proceed with the hearing on that date. There is no criticism of his discretion to hold the hearing and he found, as he said, that there were arrears of pay. There was no evidence of any entitlement to deduct anything from that pay and he therefore, having considered his jurisdiction under the various statutory provisions, concluded that the Applicant, Miss Allen, was entitled to £328.83 in respect of arrears of pay and also to damages of £109.61 being a week's pay in respect of failure to give her notice and he therefore gave judgment accordingly.

Now there is an appeal to us. As I say the Appellant does not complain of the Chairman's decision to proceed and refuse and adjournment, but what is said is this: Miss Allen omitted to tell the Tribunal that she had taken a week's holiday for which she had been paid but due to the time she had worked for the company she was not entitled to be paid. The situation about that is that the Chairman, having decided to proceed, expressly said that he had considered the answer and although he does not deal expressly with the question which is raised by the appeal, he nonetheless reached a finding which necessarily involved, so far as one can see, rejecting that contention about the holiday. It might have been better if he had dealt expressly with that but, on the face of it, he took it into consideration in reaching his decision.

It seems to us quite wrong that a party, not having attended before the learned Chairman on the hearing, should come to us and raise an appeal on a matter which the Chairman had to consider in arriving at a just result of the case and indeed the Appellant has not attended here today.

In those circumstances we have no alternative but to say, first of all, that there appears to be no error of law in the decision. We can only entertain appeals on the ground of errors of law. There is no ground whatever that we can see here for reversing or saying anything else about this decision, and therefore we affirm it and dismiss the appeal.