Do you have to pay back compensation for lost earnings if you get a job?

Someone recently found us by searching this question.

The answer is no – you don’t have to volunteer to repay it, anyway. A tribunal award is basically a guess about what the future will hold. You must tell the truth at the hearing about your prospects. But if you win compensation on the assumption that you’ll be out of work for another 6 months, and then the week after the hearing you land a new job that’s better paid than the old, that’s just your good luck.

But don’t crow about it to your old employer. It’s just conceivable that they might apply to the tribunal to review the remedy decision on the basis that there’s new evidence available that should change the award. They’d probably fail, but best not to risk it.

2 Replies to “Do you have to pay back compensation for lost earnings if you get a job?”

  1. Hi Naomi,

    This is quite informative. Thanks. What is the case was about race discrimination of pay over a long period of time. Do tribunals consider that past pay influenced what pay I secured with the new employer. And therefore, is the respondent liable to pay future losses, even the new job paid me higher than my previous job, but not as high as I believe it could have been (if my original pay with the Repondent was higher). If yes, till what number of years in the future does it seem reasonable to claim losses from the Respondent.

    Regards

  2. We can’t give advice to the public on individual cases by way of this blog.

    But in general terms: in a discrimination case, you can claim compensation for any loss the tribunal thinks is reasonably attributable to the discrimination, subject to your duty to mitigate your loss. See also the various posts tagged ‘compensation,’ especially ‘Mitigation,’ ‘The mummy track,’ and ‘Push your luck.’

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