Former head of family law awarded £13,000 by tribunal

A firm’s former head of family law has been awarded nearly £13,000 after an employment tribunal upheld her claim for unfair dismissal.

Lawcomm Solicitors in Fareham, Hampshire, must make payments totalling £12,878.04 to Sarah Lightfoot-Webber which include a basic award of £3,426, a compensatory award of £1,228.61, £1,187.68 for failure to give employment particulars and £7,035.75 in relation to breach of contract.

Employment Judge Volkmer in her 13-page remedy judgment acknowledged the firm’s small size when determining if there should be an uplift to the compensatory award.

She said: ‘In my finding there was one breach of the ACAS (advisory, concillation and arbitration service) code by the [firm] in that there was no appeal offered to the claimant. I take into account that the ACAS code was applied to some extent and that the failure appears to be advertent in that the respondent was not treating the claimant’s emails as a formal grievance.

‘However, notwithstanding the small size of the respondent, it is a law firm which holds itself out as specialising in employment law, and had an employee, the practice manager, who dealt with HR matters. For those reasons, in my finding the failure was unreasonable.’

Volkmer’s previous judgment, which upheld Lightfoot-Webber’s claims over non-payment of a bonus being in breach of contract, said: ‘It is not the tribunal’s role to assist the [firm] to escape a bad bargain. It cannot now add further caveats to the contractual obligation.’