A chef at a Douglas restaurant has been awarded more than £6,000 after winning his employment tribunal claim for unpaid wages.

Clive Moyo was employed as a chef at Villa Fusion, a restaurant owned by Blue Nile Enterprise Limited, between April 23 and September 26 last year.

He took a claim to the tribunal seeking redress for unlawful deductions from pay, failure to provide payslips and failure to provide terms and conditions of employment.

Villa Fusion denied liability but did not attend the hearing.

The restaurant, which is located on Harris Promenade, closed its doors last month ‘for the foreseeable future’ following the death of one of its owners.

Staff there said they’d found it difficult to run the venue as usual after the death of Dougie Gardner.

The tribunal ruling notes that the restaurant’s co-director has taken the death badly and appointed Adrian Christian to manage all its affairs. Mr Christian wrote to the tribunal confirming that the hearing should go ahead but that there would be no attendance.

Mr Moyo gave evidence that he had not received all his payslips from his period of employment, and he’d never had a contract of employment.

He said that the reason he left the job was because he could not get a contract - and having to leave had adversely affected his ultimate entitlement to statutory protection against unfair dismissal or redundancy.

Mr Moyo testified that he had not been paid wages for the period of his notice at £2,500 gross plus 8.5 days unpaid holiday.

The tribunal awarded a total of £6365.23 - made up of £2,500 unpaid salary, £980.73 in unpaid holiday pay, £1,153.80 for lack of payslips and £1,730.70 in relation to the failure to provide an employment contract.