Winning your unfair dismissal claim in the Tribunal can sometimes be only half the battle. This has been highlighted in 2 cases I have recently dealt with.
In the first case my client won an unfair dismissal decision after a full day’s hearing in the Tribunal. Unfortunately the Remedy Hearing was adjourned for several months. 2 days after we received the written Judgment saying that my client had won his case, we received notification that the employer had gone into liquidation.
The good news is that my client will get his basic award (equivalent of the statutory redundancy payment), his notice pay, his holiday pay and any unpaid wages at the date he left the business. This is paid by the Government through the Insolvency Service. The bad news is that he will not be paid his considerable loss of earnings and there is no way that he can now recover this part of his compensation.
In the second case, a number of staff issued proceedings for unfair dismissal and redundancy when their employer closed down a residential home business. They obtained a Judgment in the Employment Tribunal and then sought to obtain money from the Insolvency Service, only to be turned down because no formal Insolvency Order had been made. The employer had simply ceased trading.
In these circumstances the Insolvency Service paid their redundancy payment, but refused to make any of the other payments without proof that the employer was genuinely insolvent. We are now having to issue winding up proceedings against that Company in order to obtain the monies which are due to our clients.
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