Industrial Tribunal must set the dismissal award itself
The Court of Appeal sends an unfair dismissal case back to the Industrial Tribunal to quantify compensation, and holds that the four-month time limit runs from the day employment ends, not from the notice letter.
On 17 June 2026 the Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction), Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff presiding, decided cross-appeals from an Industrial Tribunal decision that found a cleaner’s dismissal for redundancy unjust. The Court holds that the Tribunal must itself liquidate the compensation it awards and cannot leave the parties to work out the sum from a list of criteria.
It also holds that the four-month period in article 75(3) of the Employment and Industrial Relations Act (Cap. 452) runs from the day the employee is in fact left without work, not from the day notice is served.
The facts
B.R. worked as a cleaner for Mellieha Holiday Centre Limited for close to fourteen years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, with occupancy at its holiday complex a fraction of normal, the company served her with a redundancy letter dated 15 October 2020, and her employment ended in January 2021. Several other cleaners were made redundant at the same time.
She claimed that the redundancy was a pretext, because an outside cleaning contractor went on to do her work. The Industrial Tribunal accepted that the shortage of work was genuine, but found the dismissal unjust because work given to the contractor within a year had not first been offered to her under article 36(3). It then set out the basis of compensation, eight months’ basic wage with statutory bonuses less social security benefits and other earnings, without stating a sum.
What the court held
Appeals from the Industrial Tribunal lie only on a point of law under article 82(3), and the Court applies that limit throughout. B.R. argued that there was no genuine redundancy, that the company could have used article 42 to agree temporary conditions instead, and that the rules on the protection of employment on a transfer of business (S.L. 452.85) should have been considered.
The Court rejects these points. The transfer argument was never raised before the Tribunal and cannot be raised for the first time on appeal. On the facts, the company had to reduce its headcount in the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic, and the Court agrees with the Tribunal that months of uncertainty were not a temporary blip.
On compensation under article 81(2)(a), the Court finds nothing contrary to law in the Tribunal’s view that real loss does not include the social security benefits received during unemployment, so those may be deducted. The complaint that the Tribunal gave too little weight to her age, a few years short of retirement, and to her skills is a complaint about the facts, and the Court declines to hear it.
The fourth grievance succeeds. The Tribunal had a duty to fix and liquidate the amount: “iżda t-Tribunal qatt ma kellu jħalli l-likwidazzjoni tal-kumpens fid-diskrezzjoni tal-partijiet” (but the Tribunal should never have left the liquidation of compensation to the discretion of the parties). If evidence was missing, the Tribunal should have asked the parties to produce it.
The case goes back to the Tribunal to quantify the award, and B.R. is to file proof of the benefits and other income she received.
The company’s cross-appeal fails. It argued that the claim was time-barred because it was filed more than four months after the October 2020 letter. The Court holds: “Id-data effettiva tal-ksur allegat f’dan il-każ hija d-data minn meta r-rikorrenti spiċċat effettivament mingħajr impjieg” (the effective date of the alleged breach in this case is the date on which the applicant was in fact left without employment).
Only from then could she bring proceedings. Its second ground, that the redundancy was fair and the work need not have been offered to her, rests on the facts as the Tribunal found them and is also dismissed. Each party bears its own costs of the appeal.
Why it matters
An employee dismissed on notice counts the four months from the last day of employment, not from the date of the letter, and an employer pleading prescription from the letter date should expect that plea to fail.
A claimant who wants a sum should put proof of loss, benefits and later earnings before the Tribunal, since a decision that states only a formula can be sent back. Arguments not made before the Tribunal, such as transfer of business, are lost on appeal.
Where it sits
The case sits where three parts of Cap. 452 meet in the termination of an indefinite contract. Article 36(3), as the Tribunal read it, gives an employee dismissed for redundancy a right to re-employment if the former post becomes available within one year.
A complaint of unfair dismissal goes to the Industrial Tribunal under article 75, within the four months set by subarticle (3), and article 81(2)(a) requires compensation based on the real damages and loss suffered, taking into account circumstances such as age and skills. Article 82(3) confines the appeal to points of law, which is why most grievances on both sides fail at that threshold.
The Court names no earlier authority in its own reasoning; it decides on the articles alone.
Source
Court of Appeal (Inferior Jurisdiction), 59/2025, 17 June 2026.