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United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Chandler & Ors v London Borough Of Ealing [1993] UKEAT 532_92_2903 (29 March 1993)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1993/532_92_2903.html
Cite as: [1993] UKEAT 532_92_2903
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I N T E R N A L
At the Tribunal
Before
THE HONOURABLE MR JUSTICE WOOD MC (P)
MR D A C LAMBERT
MRS M E SUNDERLAND JP
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
PRELIMINARY HEARING
Revised
APPEARANCES
For the Appellants MR C F JENNINGS
(Lay Representative)
MR JUSTICE WOOD (PRESIDENT): This is an appeal by way of a Preliminary Hearing by five Appellants who are represented by Mr Jennings, who is one of them, and he appeared on behalf of them before an Industrial Tribunal, who were examining whether it had jurisdiction to hear their complaints of unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal arising out of a dismissal in December 1980. They were employed as lecturers by the Ealing College of Higher Education and were dismissed on the basis of redundancy. The allegation is that those dismissals were unfair, that the reasons were contrived.
At the time, their Trade Union negotiated to get the best deal they could in the light of the situation. However, these five were dissatisfied with the situation and ultimately in June and July 1991, one later in November 1991, they issued Originating Applications in front of an Industrial Tribunal making their allegations of unfair dismissal.
In the interim this was the story as told to us by Mr Jennings today. He said that they had felt, originally, that there had been a constructive dismissal and that the dismissal for redundancy was unfair. They thought there was misconduct by the Council, by the officers and by the Committees. They consulted the Ombudsman; they consulted Ministers at the Department of Education and were advised that this was an employment matter not an education matter. They consulted their Members of Parliament. They kept in constant touch with the Chief Executive and the Chief Education Officer at the Local Authority and made allegations of irregularity.
In October 1989 in the "Daily Telegraph" they saw an article which had first been published on the 24th March 1981 indicating that perhaps there had been malpractice, and at the end of 1989 they consulted ACAS. Thereafter correspondence took place with the Local Authority and eventually, on the advice of ACAS, they issued proceedings the first of those Originating Applications being June 1991.
Pursuant to the Act the Tribunal was there to investigate whether the proceedings had been issued in time under the provisions of Section 67(2) of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978. The normal time limit is three months from the effective date of termination. These applications were years out of time. Then one considers a further period if it was not reasonably practicable for the complainants to present their Originating Applications within that period of three months. The Tribunal heard the evidence of Mr Jennings who was speaking for them all. They noted the history of the matter in particular the discovery of the article in 1989 in the "Daily Telegraph". They acknowledged that there was a feeling of unfairness and they were, at that time, advised by their Trade Union. The Tribunal also looked at the possibility that there had been a serious fraud in 1980 not discovered until 1989. Even if that were the case the delay from 1989 onwards was unreasonable and did not explain why it was not reasonably practicable for these Applicants to issue proceedings. A complaint was made about the conduct of the hearing which is now not pursued in argument before us.
We are quite unable to find any error of law in the decision of this Industrial Tribunal and as there is only an appeal on a point of law to this Tribunal we are quite unable to help in this matter and this appeal will have to be dismissed.