A woman awarded £6,800 after she was illegally sacked by text message has still not received the compensation awarded to her at an employment tribunal more than four years ago.

Charlene Yates was dismissed in 2005 from her job as a despatch manager at radio transmitter maker Veronica Ltd, then based in Highfield Lane, Keighley.

The employment tribunal in Leeds in October 2005 found she had been subject to an automatic unfair dismissal and awarded her the compensation. The panel accepted she was legitimately on leave looking after siblings while her mum recovered from an operation.

But the money awarded to her never materialised because the company folded only a few weeks later.

The boss, Paul Hollins, who at the time of the tribunal decision said he would appeal, is now running a similar company called Aareff in Spain.

Miss Yates, now the mother of a two-year-old daughter, is backing Keighley MP Ann Cryer’s call for new legislation to enforce employers to pay up.

Mrs Cryer wants the Ministry of Justice to include a mechanism for enforcement for tribunal pay-outs in the new Courts and Tribunals Bill.

The Government has taken action already and from next month High Court officers will be able to conduct proceedings on behalf of tribunal claimants. The costs will be added to the respondent’s bill.

Miss Yates, 27, of Brow Street, Keighley, said: “It’s a ludicrous situation that a court can find in your favour yet the company get away without paying. What is the point of going through all that when there is no method of enforcement on a company? People have already been treated unfairly when they go to a tribunal but then they find they might not get the money – it seems a farce.

“I didn’t do this just for the money – I wanted to prove a point about the way I had been unfairly dismissed.”

Speaking to the Telegraph & Argus from his base in Spain, Keighley-born Mr Hollins said he felt no obligation to pay the compensation because he disagreed with the tribunal’s ruling.

He said: “We closed the company because it was not worth continuing in the UK and there were issues with the regulator Ofcom. It was nothing to do with Charlene. We moved to Spain because labour at the time was cheaper. It’s not the same now with the pound as it is.”