In July 2024 it was reported that the Employment Tribunal granted interim relief in a case concerning a migrant nurse who claimed that he was unfairly dismissed.
Mr Rathod worked for Clinica Private Healthcare and had paid an immigration agent £22,000 in India to obtain a visa and employment in the UK. After joining Clinica he was given no shifts. Mr Rathod raised concerns regarding the lack of shifts being offered to him and other colleagues who had moved to the UK as migrant workers and threatened legal action. Mr Rathod was dismissed shortly after raising his concerns and brought a claim for unfair dismissal. He also applied for interim relief, which the Tribunal granted in principle.
What is Interim Relief?
Usually in Employment Tribunal cases, employees need to wait until the final hearing has concluded and a Judgment has been issued, upholding some or all of their claims, before receiving compensation. In reality, this means that employees wait up to one to two years, and sometimes longer, before a Tribunal case concludes and compensation is paid. Where employees have suffered financial losses, most commonly loss of earnings if they have been unfairly dismissed, one to two years is a substantial length of time to be left out of pocket.
In rare cases, an Employment Tribunal will grant interim relief. In such circumstances, where an employee has been dismissed and therefore is suffering an ongoing loss of earnings, a Tribunal will make an order at the start of the proceedings that the employer should continue to employ the employee until the conclusion of the case. This results in the employee continuing to receive their salary until the case is decided, and the employee also has the benefit of their continuity of service remaining unbroken.
Seeking Interim Relief
Interim relief is only available in certain types of cases and even then only in certain circumstances.
To qualify for interim relief, an employee must be claiming to have been dismissed for one of the following reasons, which would make their dismissal automatically unfair and therefore unlawful:
- Participating in union membership or activity.
- Making a protected disclosure (whistleblowing).
- Participating in activities as a health and safety representative, working time representative, pension scheme trustee, or employee representative for the purposes of collective redundancies.
An employee must then submit their ET1 claim form and an application for interim relief before the end of 7 days following their date of termination. This narrow time window will often mean that employees miss out on the opportunity to apply for interim relief, even if they have brought one of the claims in which interim relief is available.
The Tribunal will then consider whether to grant the interim relief at a preliminary hearing at the beginning of Tribunal proceedings. The Tribunal will grant interim relief if it decides that the employee is likely to establish at the final hearing that the principal reason for the dismissal was one of the prohibited reasons. This can be a difficult threshold to meet, particularly when an employee has not yet accessed documentary evidence from the employer or obtained witness evidence. It is therefore very rare that interim relief is awarded.
In the rare cases where interim relief is granted, it provides employees bringing dismissal claims with financial security whilst waiting for their Tribunal case to conclude. This is particularly important for employees in vulnerable circumstances, who may find it difficult to secure new employment after they are dismissed, including migrant workers who have been exploited as is alleged by Mr Rathod.
This blog was written by Yavnik Ganguly, solicitor at didlaw.
