Not being paid can be reason enough to resign and win your case
“Sustained non-payment of wages was a fundamental breach; compensatory awardThe main part of an unfair dismissal award, calculated to cover your actual financial loss. It is not automatic and can be reduced, including to nil, if the tribunal concludes you would have been dism... of £20,281.72.”
A serious, ongoing failure to pay your wages, pension or holiday payThe pay you receive for the paid annual leave you're entitled to under UK law, worth at least 5.6 weeks a year for most workers. It's usually calculated from your normal pay, though the exact method d... can be a fundamental breach of your contract, giving you the right to resign and claim constructive dismissalWhen your employer's behaviour is so serious that you feel you have no choice but to resign, the law may treat that resignation as a dismissal. The most common basis is a fundamental breach of the imp....
- Keep written evidence of what you are owed and when it was due, it strengthens both a wages claim and a constructive dismissal claim.
- Your employer cannot introduce a late, tactical counterclaim against you just because your case is close to a hearing.
- If you are thinking about resigning over unpaid wages, get advice first, the timing and reasons you give matter to whether your claim succeeds.
The situation
After the employer stopped paying wages, pension contributions and holiday pay for several months, an employee resigned and treated herself as dismissed. The employer later admitted, in writing, that it owed her thousands of pounds. Only when the case was close to a final hearing did the employer try to bring a new claim of its own against her, based on facts it had known about for months.
What the tribunal found
The tribunal found the resignation amounted to constructive dismissal. A repeated, sustained failure to pay salary, pension and holiday pay is the kind of conduct the law treats as a fundamental breach of the implied term of trust and confidence (Employment Rights Act 1996), entitling an employee to resign and treat the contract as at an end. The tribunal's detailed reasoning on this point was given orally at the hearing rather than published in a separate written judgment. It awarded a compensatory award of £20,281.72 for the unfair dismissal, on top of the wages, holiday pay and pension contributions the employer had already admitted it owed. The tribunal also refused the employer's attempt to add a large new counterclaim against the employee just three working days before the final hearing, roughly four months after the deadline for doing so, even though the employer had known the relevant facts since the previous year. The tribunal noted that, on the employer's own evidence, investigating the issue simply "was not a business priority."
Mrs N Mann v DAPV Ltd. Case 1311862/2024. Midlands West Employment Tribunal. 2 July 2026.