Leeds-based Morrish Solicitors has secured a protective award for the employees of now-closed Brass Agency.
Employees of Brass Agency contacted Morrish on 8 December 2019 after the PR and marketing firm went into administration and more than 50 members of staff 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, 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 eight weeks of this can be claimed from the government’s Redundancy Payments Service, currently capped 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.
An employer with 20 or more employees has a responsibility to inform and consult when it is proposing to make redundancies. After looking at the administrator’s report, Morrish could see that this had not happened and the company had in fact been struggling for some time.
Morrish’s protective award claim was accepted by the employment tribunal and a judgment 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, as it was clear that the employees had been given no information or consultation and were unaware of Brass Agency’s financial difficulties.
David Sorensen, employment partner at Morrish, said: “I’m delighted that we managed to achieve a quick victory for our clients and compensation was received by the affected employees within four months of us beginning to represent them.”
