Brass employees get the compensation they deserve
Employees of Brass Agency contacted us on the 8th December 2019 after the company went into administration and over 50 employees were left without a job.
When employees have been made redundant without appropriate information or consultation, and there are 20 or more employees based at one establishment such as a workplace, they can make a claim to an Employment Tribunal for a protective award. If this succeeds, an employment tribunal can make an award of up to 90 days’ pay per affected employee. If the employer is insolvent, up to 8 weeks of this can be claimed from the government’s Redundancy Payments Service capped currently at £538.00 per week subject to deductions.
With just a few weeks left before Christmas, Brass employees were told they’d lost their jobs when the administrators arrived at their workplace.
Legally an employer with 20 or more employees has a responsibility to inform and consult when it is proposing to make redundancies such as because of financial problems. After looking at the administrator’s report we could see that this had not happened and the company had clearly been struggling for some time and had even tried to sell some of its property.
Claiming for a protective award with us is relatively straight forward for those claiming, we ask you to fill in an online questionnaire to give us more information and we do the rest. We agreed a no win no fee arrangement with Brass employees so if their claim wasn’t successful, they wouldn’t be charged for our services, and we received our legal costs from part of the compensation.
The claim was accepted by the employment tribunal and a judgement was made in the employees’ favour making a protective award of 90 days’ pay for each claimant. The administrators decided not to defend the legal claim, effectively admitting liability; it was clear the employees had been given no information or consultation and were not aware of the struggles the company was in. The strength of our claim and our speedy involvement, made this protective award one of the quickest we have won for employees giving them the much needed pay they deserved.
Brass employees won the maximum amount of compensation possible. Even with the delays due to Christmas, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic, the claimants have received their compensation in just over 4 months.
“We’re all absolutely thrilled with how quickly and efficiently Morrish dealt with our claim – they treated us with care and compassion at a time that was difficult for us all. We’re all pleased we can put the money to good use, especially during the COVID crisis.”
We believe our success with protective awards comes from our continuous communication with our clients, our depth of experience in employment claims and our efficiency, giving them reassurance at an already worrying and stressful time. Our employment rights team are renowned in the industry for their knowledge and expertise, but also their empathy and professionalism in cases such as this one. The team, headed up by managing partner and head of employment, David Sorensen, worked tirelessly to achieve the best results they could for the claimants and it paid off.
David said “I’m delighted that we managed to achieve a quick victory for our clients and compensation was received by the affected employees within 4 months of us beginning to represent them.”
If you’ve been made redundant without consultation, you and your colleagues could be eligible for compensation. For more information contact our Employment Rights team.
