employment tribunal or small claims court

joesab

starting anew thread as its a slightly different question than my last one (ex employer owes me £1100). In a nutshell my ex employer owes me £1100 backpay as they didt pay me the NMW for the duration of my employment. Theyve been attempting to say the business in insolvent but apparantly its not insolvent at all. From what Ive read there are two options I can pursue them for the money


1 - employent tribunal. Ive been on the ACAS website and before i can take them to a tribunal there is an obligation to try Early Concillation. Looking at the form it states that once i submit t I am then agreeing that I will continue to a tribunal if concillation fails.
The ACAS website is anightmare to navigate. I cant find anywhere the cost of going to a tribunal.


2 - the other option is a small claims court which i envisage will develop to the bailff stage as my ex employers will ignore correspondence but the idea of bailffs on the doorstep will frighten the s**t out of them. It seems worth the inital £70 outlay


But which of the two is more practical?

Comms69

joesab wrote: »

starting anew thread as its a slightly different question than my last one (ex employer owes me £1100). In a nutshell my ex employer owes me £1100 backpay as they didt pay me the NMW for the duration of my employment. Theyve been attempting to say the business in insolvent but apparantly its not insolvent at all. From what Ive read there are two options I can pursue them for the money


1 - employent tribunal. Ive been on the ACAS website and before i can take them to a tribunal there is an obligation to try Early Concillation. Looking at the form it states that once i submit t I am then agreeing that I will continue to a tribunal if concillation fails.
The ACAS website is anightmare to navigate. I cant find anywhere the cost of going to a tribunal.


2 - the other option is a small claims court which i envisage will develop to the bailff stage as my ex employers will ignore correspondence but the idea of bailffs on the doorstep will frighten the s**t out of them. It seems worth the inital £70 outlay


But which of the two is more practical?

Huh? What do you mean it's now solvent?

joesab

I havent said it's now solvent. Sorry if there's some confusion here but just to clarify


HMRC were pursuing this money but stopped doing so as the business had called in Insolvency Practiioners
As recommended on the letter from the practitioners I submitted a claim to The Insolvency Service only to be told the business is still legally solvent.

Comms69

joesab wrote: »

I havent said it's now solvent. Sorry if there's some confusion here but just to clarify


HMRC were pursuing this money but stopped doing so as the business had called in Insolvency Practiioners
As recommended on the letter from the practitioners I submitted a claim to The Insolvency Service only to be told the business is still legally solvent.

Right. At the minute. How long do you think that will last?


Employment tribunal would take months or years to get heard. Small claims abit quicker.


In both cases the business has no money. Insolvency practioners will have earmarked anything of value to be sold to pay off HMRC.


Bailiffs wont be able to do anything by the time you get to that stage.

joesab

Now thats just the thing.. they do have money, but its hidden to ensure 'no assets;. One of the owners is going through a messy divorce and is hiding money. I was there not long ago when bailiffs were visiting the house of the other director - and a carrier bag containing a huge sum of cash magically appeared. On books they are skint. In reality probably not.


Bailffs can visit and repossess personal items cant they? At least one vehicle is in the name of one of the directors
My thinking is that if bailiffs are sent round, I wouldnt mind betting that another carrier bag of money appears just to get rid of them

Comms69

joesab wrote: »

Now thats just the thing.. they do have money, but its hidden to ensure 'no assets;. One of the owners is going through a messy divorce and is hiding money. - His money, not the companies money..... I was there not long ago when bailiffs were visiting the house of the other director - and a carrier bag containing a huge sum of cash magically appeared. On books they are skint. In reality probably not. - They don't owe you the money.


Bailffs can visit and repossess personal items cant they? - no. Because they don't owe you a penny At least one vehicle is in the name of one of the directors
My thinking is that if bailiffs are sent round, I wouldnt mind betting that another carrier bag of money appears just to get rid of them

A bag of money appeared because it was a personal debt. This isn't.

joesab

Thanks. Ill have a think about where to go next with this. Ironically if these were decent people I dont think I would bother so much but they have literally trampled over employees, bullied people out of jobs knowing that personal family circumstance rely on them being in employment. One of them even said to me he would pay me lump sum of £500 if I could make life difficult enough to make a certain worker hand in his notice. When he saw my reaction he tried to make out he was only joking! Same employee left soon after as they were making his life absolute hell

sangie595

Employment tribunal may take longer, but for a simple claim like this, not that long. And if you will never see the money, ACAS will tell you that. Plus, it's free. Small claims cost money you will never see again if there is no money.

But my betting is - and I'm better at it than you are - that you will never see the money because what you think are company assets aren't. These type of people are experts at hiding money. And they get away with every single day. That carrier bag is staying with them.

JCS1

Comms69 wrote: »

Right. At the minute. How long do you think that will last?


Employment tribunal would take months or years to get heard. Small claims abit quicker.


In both cases the business has no money. Insolvency practioners will have earmarked anything of value to be sold to pay off HMRC.


Bailiffs wont be able to do anything by the time you get to that stage.

HMRC are not a preferred creditor anymore, it changed with the Enterprise Act 2002.

ReadingTim

Neither - it is pointless.

You are trying to decide which legal route to go down, when the reality is that the company (or rather its directors) have not felt themselves to be excessively bound by the law before, therefore it's unlikely they're going to be too bothered by it in future.

You're already a grand down. Don't throw good money after bad, or waste any more time and energy on it - it's really not worth it. Sorry this isn't what you want to hear, but there's little honour amongst thieves.

Annisele

If you do get a judgement - from an employment tribunal or anywhere else - then what you'll actually get is a piece of paper. That piece of paper will instruct the employer to pay you. But if it's insolvent, it won't pay any attention at all to the paper.



From the sounds of things your particular employer wouldn't have paid much attention to the piece of paper in any event. Enforcing judgements is a PITA - it can be done, if there's money to pay, but it's not at all quick. Where there's no money to pay, trying to enforce a judgement is just throwing even more bad money after good.



Insolvency Practioners are pretty good at recovering money, but they're not magicians. I know that sucks, and I'm sorry.