Advice requested on probably taking ex-employer to Court

[Barbarah]

Hello all,

First of all, I want to say a big thank you to you all for creating and running this forum. I need help right now and I am so happy a place like this exists.


So on to my problem.



I stopped working for a company due to health issues a year ago and I had to travel abroad to get the proper treatment that was necessary.


I claimed SSP for a month with my old company BEFORE I went abroad, and decided to resign rather than keep on claiming, because I just felt it was not right.


When I was paid a month later I was missing the £300 of SSP I was owed, and another £100 of holiday pay.


I pursued the company and was told that I was not entitled to SSP and also not entitled to holiday pay for my final month of work because I resigned a day before the end of the month and I had to have worked a full month to be entitled to my holiday pay for that month.


I went on another forum, I was told I was entitled to SSP, I was entitled to holiday pay for the month I worked, just not the final day I did not, and I was alos entitled to have my final weeks pay paid in full and not just as SSP, even though it was not worked - see here:


http://www.willans.co.uk/files/uploa...sick%20pay.pdf


So I wrote to my companies HR department several times to tell them this. Every time they denied this. As I was in America at the time getting the treatment I needed, I told them that the pay I was entitled to was badly needed and the result of not having it meant I was going to have to live in hostels until my flight home. As a 44 year old woman just getting on top of a serious medical condition this was not desirable in the least. They continued to tell me I was not owed any more monies, and I was almost made homeless as a result before my flight home. I also could not afford to change my flight because of lack of funds (cashflow issues and not bing able to pay to change before the returning flight was priced out of my league) and also had to promise to pay a very kindly hostel owner back in January, and as a result I ended up spending £200 more than I would have if I could have afforded to travel home early. I also had to borrow from friends and family when they could afford it.


I subsequently came hom and on the other forum was advised to file a subject access request, which I did.


The report was then sent to the wrong address (not the one I gave them) and I had to pay £40 to get hold of it/have it forwarded to me. They deny sending it to the wrong address despite my having emails stating the address to send it and the report itself has the wrong address on it repeatedly. It was also incorrectly redacted and so contains information on many other employees of the company that you can clearly read behind the faint black marker pen redactions, including one who has an attachment of earnings against his name. Further, it contained customer information, and also an email which stated that the person who put it together was handling the case so that the boss of the company did not have to "get his hands dirty and could not be linked to the case."


My contract says nothing about holiday pay only being paid monthly on completion of a FULL months service, and from what I understand EU law requires you to only have worked the first day of every month to be entitled to that months holiday pay.


I have requested compensation for all these things, and the company sent me a without prejudice offer asking me to accept £200 for the DPA and the holiday pay issues and agree to stop all further actions now and forever against them. I rejected this


Since then the Inland Revenue have written to the company ordering them to pay the £300 SSP within a month as I am most certainly owed it, and the Information Commissioners Office have almost finished an investigation into the DPA issues, which looks like it will go my way.


I just wanted to see if anyone could offer advice on how to proceed, re: my legal argument, and what would I ask for in Court? re: additional compensation. I think that not having this money when due must have cost me an additional £400 in total. I warned them of these increased costs if they did not pay me what I was due in many emails.


Thank you all in advance,


Babs

p.s. and obviously, this is too late for an employment tribunal...

[Eloise01]

Re: Advice requested on probably taking ex-employer to Court

I have no idea where you are getting your advice from - but wherever it is let us know so that we can STOP others from going there.

You are only entitled to full pay during your notice period (if you qualify in law) if the EMPLOYER terminates the contract. You resigned, so this does not apply to you. So in that matter you are wrong and HR are right - you aren't owed that. Whether you may be owed any SSP I cannot tell based on this information. Why do HR say that there is no money due?

You are also wrong about holiday pay - your holiday accrues based on the actual length of time you are employed. You do not get a full months holiday accrual because you worked the first day of the month! Full time employees are entitled to 28 days per year, including bank holidays, unless your contract stipulated more. That is roughly half a day per week of employment.

So you are almost certainly not due as much as you think you are.

What you think it may have cost you in additional costs because you did not receive this money is irrelevant - you must prove to a court that the failure to receive this money involved a direct and quantifiable cost (i.e. you must prove it!) to you. You certainly won't get compensated, for example, for having to live in hostels. You may be able to make some claim for distress - but only if you can first prove to the court that there was a real loss to you as a result of not getting this money, and only as a result of not getting this money. I think this may be difficult since your finances were so tight from the way that you describe them that at most this may not have improved matters - but £400 does not go very far in terms of maintaining a home and bills here and also living in the USA. Assuming you can convince a court, and that is a big assumption, then the net gain to you may be (and probably will be) a matter of a few £hundred - certainly not much more than that. And you must also remember that everybody has a great court case - so it's amazing how often people lose! Courts are risky - there is no guarantee of winning anything, and more often than not if you win you don't get anywhere near what you expect.

My advice would be to try to settle - why not make a counter offer and see what they say. Your SSP is being paid. so your actual loss here appears to be only the holiday pay and a few incidental expenses that you can prove - the other parts of the claim are dodgy to say the least unless you have considerably more proof of loss than your opinion. So what would that amount to, and what is it that you think is reasonable?