In Hardie Grant London Limited v Aspden, the EAT has made it clear (if it wasn’t already) that the statutory limit on the amount of compensation that can be recovered for unfair dismissal must be applied after, not before, any ‘grossing up’ calculation has been done. As usual, I’m indebted to Daniel Barnett for his email alert on this case.

Grossing up is the calculation that you do to work out what you need to receive so that, after tax, the part of your award that you get to keep properly compensates you for your net losses. If your claim for lost earnings amounts to less than £30,000, you don’t have to worry about it: you won’t have to pay tax on it anyway. But if you are claiming more than £30,000 in lost earnings, although the tribunal will award you your net losses, the amount by which your award exceeds £30,000 will still be liable to be taxed as income.

It’s not really difficult to calculate how much more you need to be paid in order to be left with the right amount after tax – but it is quite fiddly, and will depend in part on your income for the relevant year from other sources. If anyone knows of a set of good, clear step-by-step instructions for this calculation (or better still, an online calculator that asks you for the relevant information and then spits out the answer), please comment.

A paper-heavy case – where the hearing bundle runs to several volumes and there are a dozen witnesses or more – presents various specific difficulties. The main one of course is that there is a lot of material to get your head round. There’s no quick fix for that: preparation will take a long time.

This post just offers a handful of very small ways to make life easier.

1. Label the inside cover of each volume of your bundle with the volume number and the page range. That way, you’ll be able to identify the different volumes of your bundle at a glance when they’re open on the desk in front of you.
2. Print your own copy of the bundle double-sided. It’ll weigh half as much and take up half as much space. There will be some minor inconvenience (e.g. where you need to insert additional pages after the bundle is printed), but the reduction in general hassle is worth it. If you want to reduce your bundle to quarter size and you have good eyesight, print it double-sided on A5 paper.
3. Write the name or initials of the witness at the top of each page of the witness statement. (If it’s your statement, include it in the ‘header zone’ of the document; if it’s the other side’s, and they haven’t done that, just write it on each page.)
4. Print claimant and respondent witness statements on different coloured paper, so you can tell at a glance which is which.