A Darlington-based food bank has been ordered to pay £5,000 to two former members of staff after failing to pay their wages.
A judge found that NQA, a community interest company, owed both employees pay from between December 2021 and March 2022.
The CIC made only one payment in this period, covering a single week’s salary for one of the employees, the judgement said.
NQA did not attend the tribunal, and the paperwork states that the food bank has closed down. Local media reports say the CIC had been in dispute with its landlord over unpaid rent.
NQA did not respond to a request for comment and its website is no longer active.
The case was heard last month and the judgment, published today, says that NQA employed two part-time members of staff last December, one as a café assistant and the other as a cleaner.
Employment Judge Sweeney said that one employee did not receive any wages in this period, while the other “was paid the equivalent of one week’s pay on 14 February 2022 but nothing more during the whole of her employment, and even then [NQA] did not reference the payment as relating to any period of time”.
NQA closed on 25 March 2022, the judge said, by which point one employee was owed £2,926 and the other £2,132.
The Darlington Echo reported in April that the food bank had closed after NQA had been evicted by its private landlord, who claimed he was owed thousands in unpaid rent.
NQA said it was owed rent in turn by a local authority-funded project based in the same building, but the council denied any responsibility for the situation.