In 2020, Ms Korpysa was told that because of the COVID lockdown, her workplace would be closing.  She thought that meant that she was being dismissed, and asked her employer, Impact Recruitment Services Limited, for details of her contract, accrued holiday pay entitlement and (said Impact) her P45. Impact took that as meaning that she was resigning, and based on that belief it processed steps to take her off the payroll and send her the P45 it said she had requested.  She in turn took that as confirmation of her assumed dismissal, even though that was not Impact’s intention, and started unfair dismissal proceedings. 

In what must have been one of those is-one-coffee-enough mornings, the Employment Tribunal was therefore faced with deciding the rights and wrongs of a termination of Korpysa’s employment caused by neither party giving notice but each believing that the other had.