From Francis Le Gresley, Citizens Advice Bureau manager.
IT is unfortunate that your newspaper failed to give any significant publicity to the news release from the joint administrators of Woolworths dated 21 January.
From Francis Le Gresley, Citizens Advice Bureau manager.
IT is unfortunate that your newspaper failed to give any significant publicity to the news release from the joint administrators of Woolworths dated 21 January.
Consequently, your readers may be unaware that ‘no employees of Woolworths, in about 800 units, have received notice monies or redundancy payments from their employer’.
The joint administrators were appointed by the company under paragraph 22 of schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986 and are required to perform their functions in the interests of the company’s creditors as a whole.
In particular, the administrators are under a legal duty to observe the statutory order of priorities when dealing with creditors. An initial meeting of creditors with the administrators is due to take place in London on 3 February.
Employees’ preferential claims for wages are subject to the statutory limit of £800. There is no right to be paid in priority for debts over £800 arising from non-payment of pay in lieu of notice, whether they are statutory or contractual.
The administrators advise that the employees of the Jersey store were paid arrears of wages or salary due to them up to 27 November 2008, the date of the commencement of the administration, and for the period during which they worked for Woolworths in administration, as a cost of the administration.
Should the States of Jersey decide to pay to the employees of Woolworths their statutory notice pay entitlements, under the Employment (Jersey) Law 2003, totalling £139,466, a claim may be accepted by the administrators under the subrogated rights provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
However, the priority claim would be for £40,939 and the balance of £98,527 would rank equally with those of the about 4,000 non-priority creditors, which will in due course include the subrogated non-priority claims made by the Redundancy Payments Offices, where Woolworths’ employees in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been paid from the National Insurance Fund.
Having no knowledge of the assets and liabilities of the company, it is impossible to speculate how much money will be left for distribution to ordinary creditors, but the States would have to expect to write off a considerable proportion of their non-priority claim unless the proceeds of sale of leasehold and freehold assets, belonging to Woolworths in Jersey, can be seized by the Viscount for the exclusive benefit of creditors in Jersey.
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