J Anderson and O Bembridge v C Beeson T/a The Grove Ferry Inn: 2309157/2025

EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS

Case No 2309157/2025

Between

J Anderson and O BembridgeClaimant

C Beeson T/a The Grove Ferry InnRespondent

Before

Employment Judge M Da Costa sitting alone

Date 21 June 2026

JUDGMENT

The judgment of the Tribunal is as follows: Procedural decision on postponement application and substantive decisions on TUPE transfer and on the claimants’ complaints of unlawful deductions of wages pursuant to regulation 30 of the Working Time Regulations 1998 and section 23 of the Employment Rights Act 1996

[1]The respondent’s written request for a postponement, which was opposed by the claimants, is refused.

[2]There had been a transfer of an undertaking from John Hinsley to Chloe Beeson on 17 September 2025, therefore the rights of the claimants to holiday pay and the liability for failure to pay the same transferred from John Hinsley to Chloe Beeson.

[3]The claimants’ complaints of unlawful deductions of wages in the form of holiday pay accrued but unpaid are well founded and succeed.

[4]The respondent is ordered to pay James Anderson £617 in respect of holiday pay accrued but unpaid.

[5]The respondent is ordered to pay Olivia Bembridge £434 in respect of holiday pay accrued but unpaid.

[6]When the proceedings were begun the respondent was in breach of the duty to the claimants under section 1(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to provide a written statement of particulars of employment. Pursuant to section 38(3)(b) of the Employment Act 2002, the awards immediately above are increased by the “minimum amount” of two weeks’ pay as defined in section 38(4)(a) of that Act. There were no exceptional circumstances that would make that increase unjust or inequitable. It was not just and equitable to increase the awards immediately above by the “higher amount” as defined in section 38(4)(b) of that Act.

[7]In respect of the “minimum amount” under section 38(4)(a) of the Employment Act 2002, the respondent is ordered to pay James Anderson £503.36 and is ordered to pay Olivia Bembridge £915.20, in both cases in excess of what is ordered in paragraphs 4 and 5 above.

REASONS

[8]Pursuant to rule 60(4A)(b)(i) of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024, I gave summary reasons for the decision orally at the hearing on 16 June 2026.

[9]Pursuant to rule 60(4B), at the hearing I announced that the oral reasons given were summary reasons under rule 60(4A)(b)(i) and that written summary reasons would not be provided unless requested by any party at the hearing or by a written request received by the Tribunal within 14 days of the sending of the written record of the decision.

[10]Notwithstanding that the oral reasons given at the hearing were summary and that no party requested written summary reasons at the hearing, I have decided that it is appropriate to record in this judgment detailed reasons for(a) why the postponement application was refused and

(b) the calculation in respect of the increase of the award pursuant to the Employment Act 2002. This is because the respondent was not at the hearing to hear my reasons for refusing the postponement, and because I did not have time to calculate the Employment Act 2002 amounts at the hearing.

[11]I believe that paragraph 10 immediately above is within the spirit of rule 60(5) of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024. That is because this judgment does not reproduce the oral summary reasons given for the substantive decisions on liability. Relevant background in respect of the postponement application

[12]This case was originally listed for a final hearing for 2 hours on 09 March 2026.

[13]On that occasion there was not a trial because I postponed the case. This was because:(a) No ET3 response form had been presented by the respondent and upon hearing her this was because she was under the impression that she was not the correct respondent, because she had taken over the lease of the Grove Ferry Inn on 17 September 2025 from a John Hinsley who she understood was now insolvent, but who was the holder of the franchise at the time of the alleged non-payments to the claimants;

(b) There was clearly an issue as to whether there had been a transfer of an undertaking from John Hinsley to Chloe Beeson, and due to the lack of clarity so far in the progress of the case, none of the parties were prepared or had evidence on 09 March 2026 about that core issue.

[14]After 09 March 2026 I issued a Case Management Order which clarified what the issues in the case were, and made Directions to the parties by way of preparation for the adjourned final hearing which I asked to be set for a full day on a date in a range of dates that the parties and I could accommodate.

[15]The Claimants complied fully with the Directions in that Case Management Order. The Respondent did not comply in any shape or form.

[16]The case was then set down for a final hearing on 16 June 2026.

[17]On 12 June 2026, and then again on 16 June 2026 at 1:15am in the morning, the respondent emailed the Tribunal asking for a postponement of the hearing of 16 June 2026 on the following grounds:(a) She was awaiting surgery for removal of an organ and fitting of a heart monitor;

(b) This had substantially affected her ability to gather and present evidence and documentation in readiness for the hearing of 16 June 2026;

(c) To proceed on 16 June 2026 would place her at a significant disadvantage and would prevent her from presenting her case properly.

[18]To her email the respondent attached a fit note from her GP which said that she was assessed on 01 June 2026 as unfit to work for the period of 14 May 2026 to 31 August 2026, the reason given being “undergoing investigation for ongoing symptoms”.

[19]The claimants opposed the postponement application.

[20]Before the hearing started on 16 June 2026, I instructed the clerk to send an urgent email to the respondent asking her to consider whether she could join so that she could provide further explanation about her medical condition and how that affected her both generally and on the day of the hearing today 16 June 2026. No answer was forthcoming. Reasons for the decision to refuse the postponement application

[21]The reasons for refusal were as follows:(a) Inability to work is not necessarily the same as inability to attend a Tribunal hearing;

(b) The medical grounds that the respondent had given in her emails, including the fit note, were very scant and generalised, and did not demonstrate that there was necessarily an impediment to her attending on 16 June 2026, nor that she had necessarily been prevented from preparing for her case ahead of 16 June 2026;

(c) There was no apparent reason why the respondent could not have notified the Tribunal of her medical problems and their impact on her ability to prepare her case on 14 May, or between 14 May and the date on which she did notify them;

(d) The contents of the fit note, and of the respondent’s email explanations, wholly failed to account for the respondent’s failure to discharge any of the Directions I had made in the Case Management Order, especially taking into account that she had known at the hearing of 09 March 2026 (indeed had referenced at that time) brief details of the basis on which she had contended a lack of a TUPE transfer and had stated that she had documentation supporting that position. There was therefore no apparent reason why she could not have at least provided that documentation before she was signed off work, and no detail about how precisely how any medical condition had prevented that;

(e) The respondent had failed to appear on 16 June 2026 to explain any of this, or to provide any further explanations about her medical situation. The medical information she had provided, including her fit note, did not satisfactorily account for such an inability.

(f) In light of the above, I found that rule 30A(2) was not satisfied, in particular that there were no exceptional circumstances for the purposes of rule 30A(2)(c).

(g) Rule 30A(2)(a) also required me to consider the overriding objective in rule 2, and whether a postponement would be practicable and appropriate for the purposes of giving the parties the opportunity to resolve their disputes by agreement.

(h) It was clear to me that the dispute was not resolvable by agreement between the parties because their positions were entrenched and there had been substantial lack of compliance by the respondent.

(i) As to the requirement in the overriding objective to deal with a case “fairly and justly”, the claimant’s representative made submissions from which it was clear to me that a postponement would cause them detriment. I balanced that detriment against the detriment cited by the respondent in her emails (that it would place her at a significant disadvantage and would prevent her from presenting her case properly). Given the wholesale lack of compliance by the respondent with the Tribunal processes and orders at all stages of the litigation so far, I decided that the burden of the detriment of a postponement would fall at least equally on all parties, and likely disproportionately on the claimants. In addition, the claimants had provided in response to the Directions in the Case Management Order a bundle of evidence, as well as witness statements, that were capable of informing and deciding the issues in the case which were relatively simple. For all these reasons I found that a postponement was not “fair a just” to any party, that the parties were on a equal footing to proceed without a postponement, that it would not be proportionate to the complexity and importance of the issues in the case to postpone, and that further expense to the exchequer in setting aside Tribunal time for a postponement was not justified. Remedy – the basis for the calculations

[22]The amounts in paragraphs 4 and 5 above were made with reference to(a) a payslip of James Anderson for November 2024 and a payslip of Olivia Bembridge for December 2024 that showed the total gross paid for the year to date,

(b) the National Minimum Wage thresholds that they were paid for under those payslips,

(d) the increased rate of the National Minimum Wage after they turned 21 in respect of the amounts of holiday pay that were not paid. This was calculated by the claimants’ representative by inputting that data into the appropriate gov.uk calculator to find the number of hours of statutory entitlement that had accrued. The claimants’ representative took me through how she had calculated the amounts in oral submissions. I was satisfied that the calculations she had arrived at were correct.

[23]Section 38(6) of the Employment Act 2002 says that the amount of a week’s pay shall be calculated for the purposes of section 38 in accordance with Chapter 2 of Part 14 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and shall not exceed the amount for the time being specified in section 227 of that Act (maximum amount of a week’s pay).

[24]Section 224 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 provides as follows: “224 Employments with no normal working hours(1) This section applies where there are no normal working hours for the employee when employed under the contract of employment in force on the calculation date.

(2) The amount of a week’s pay is the amount of the employee’s average weekly remuneration in the period of twelve weeks ending- (a) where the calculation date is the last day of a week, with that week, and (b) otherwise, with the last complete week before the calculation date.

(3) In arriving at the average weekly remuneration no account shall be taken of a week in which no remuneration was payable by the employer to the employee and renumeration in earlier weeks shall be brought in so as to bring up to twelve the number of weeks of which account is taken.

(4) This section is subject to sections 227 and 228.”

[25]Although the example rota in the bundle illustrated, on the evidence of the claimants as to when they were getting typical shifts, a typical week’s hours for them, my decision was that the evidence was that on the whole there were no “normal working hours” because as well as the work varying seasonally, the shifts were uncertain in that they were at the whim of the respondent and at the mercy of circumstances, in a zero hours environment. Therefore, I decided that section 224 ERA 1996 applied.

[26]In this case, the calculation date is 31 May 2025 which is the last day of employment of both claimants by the respondent. From the shift rota example provided in the papers, backed by oral evidence and witness statements, the pub rota was based on a 7-day pattern of Saturday to the next Sunday excluding Monday and Tuesday. Assuming the statutory “week” to be Monday to Sunday, this gave a “week” for the purposes of the section 224 calculation to be weekends consisting of two 12-hour shifts (24 hours total) for James Anderson and 5 days (Wednesday to Sunday) of varying hours totalling 44 hours for Olivia Bembridge. But the claimants did not work every consecutive week in their period of employment. Based on the oral evidence and witness statements, and accounting for weeks where for various reasons the claimants did not work at all (see section 224(3)) or where for whatever reason a claimant’s “normal week” pattern was incomplete, counting back 12 weeks I calculated the average weekly hours worked over the 12-week period for the purposes of section 224(2) and (3) as 22 hours a week for James Anderson and 40 hours per week for Olivia Bembridge.

[27]Since the claimants were paid some holiday pay in summer 2024 but none thereafter, both claimants turned 21 in November 2024 and at the time that the unpaid holiday pay crystallised at the end of their employment, they were both 21, I have taken the hourly rate payable for the purposes of section 224 to be £11.44 which is the National Minimum Wage rate for the financial year 2024-2025 for people aged 21 or over. Approved by: Employment Judge Da Costa Date: 21 June 2026 Date: 30 June 2026 Note Summary reasons for the judgment were given orally at the hearing. Written summary reasons will not be provided unless a party asked for them at the hearing or a party makes a written request within 14 days of the sending of this written record of the decision.