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United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Reading Borough Council v Singfield & Anor [1994] UKEAT 363_92_2804 (28 April 1994)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1994/363_92_2804.html
Cite as: [1994] UKEAT 363_92_2804
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At the Tribunal
HIS HONOUR JUDGE J PEPPITT QC
MR K HACK JP
MRS P TURNER OBE
(2) MR M H CASE
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
Revised
APPEARANCES
For the Appellant MR B CARR
(OF COUNSEL)
Head of Legal Services
Reading Borough Council
Civic Centre
Reading RG1 7TD
For the Respondents MR M H CASE
(In Person)
(MR H SINGFIELD
(In Person)
JUDGE PEPPITT QC: This is an appeal from the decision of the Reading Industrial Tribunal made on the 16 March 1992. The Tribunal held unanimously that the Respondents, Mr Singfield and Mr Case, had been unfairly dismissed and should be awarded compensation. The Appellants, the Reading Borough Council, appeal against that decision on the ground that in considering the circumstances in which the Respondents were dismissed the Tribunal expressed its own view of the Respondents' conduct, and having found that the Appellants acted unreasonably, characterised the dismissals as unfair. In fact, said Mr Carr, on the Appellants' behalf, the Tribunal should have adopted the classical approach of considering whether or not what the Appellants did was within, or without, the band of reasonable responses available to a reasonable employer.
An application of that test, said Mr Carr, could only have resulted in a finding that the Appellants' action in dismissing the Respondents was within that reasonable band. Accordingly he submits we should allow the appeal and substitute for the decision of the Tribunal a decision that both Respondents had been fairly dismissed.
The Respondents are not represented, and accordingly they have been in some difficulty in answering those submissions of Mr Carr, which are almost wholly submissions of law. Their position, shorn of its legal niceties is very clear. They were employed by the Appellants as market supervisor and supervisor's assistant respectively, at a market operated by the Appellants at the St Mary's Vicarage site in Reading. Their job description, as found by the Tribunal, was included in Mr Case's case "enforcing the market regulations and controlling parking". In Mr Singfield's case his job description included "the enforcement of parking restrictions at the St Mary's Vicarage site".
Until 1989 Mr Case tells us that their only responsibility for parking was to organise the parking places of those vehicles lawfully there, and to place stickers beneath the windscreens of those vehicles which were not. The latter function included co-operation with the Appellants' legal department in prosecuting those who had parked unlawfully. In the Spring of 1989 the Appellants decided to introduce a wheel clamping system to resolve the question of unlawful parking at the St Mary's Vicarage site. The Respondents refused to wheel clamp and this refusal ultimately lead to their dismissal. They argued that their job descriptions did not require them to wheel clamp. The Tribunal construed those terms in the job descriptions to which we have referred as requiring the Respondents to wheel clamp. The Tribunal found, or held, the words "enforcing the Market Regulations and controlling parking" and the words "the enforcement of parking restrictions" were apt to cover control and enforcement by wheel clamps in just the same way as the applicants accepted that those words were apt to cover control and enforcement by the issue of parking tickets.
That holding by the Tribunal was in part a question of law, and in part a question of fact. The construction of a written document is ordinarily a question of law, but here the Respondents argue that the responsibilities involving wheel clamping were so different from those which they had carried out up to March 1989 that it would be wrong to construe their job descriptions as embracing those significantly different and added functions.
Mr Case tells us that the facts upon which he relies in support of that contention were all before the Tribunal. Neither Mr Carr, nor his instructing Solicitor, then appeared and we of course have not had the benefit of the Chairman's Notes of Evidence. We have come to the conclusion that in order to assess for ourselves whether or not the Tribunal's interpretation of the Respondents job description was right, we must consider the evidence that was before them, and we can only do that by sight of the Chairman's notes.
Accordingly, we have come to the conclusion that justice requires in the unusual circumstances of this case that we adjourn this appeal, directing that the Chairman provides his notes on the subject of liability for use at the adjourned hearing of this Tribunal. In the circumstances it would be wrong for us to express any final view on the point which Mr Carr makes, but it is perhaps useful that we should say this. If we are persuaded that the Tribunal did apply the wrong test to the Appellants' action in dismissing the two Respondents, we should have to decide whether, as Mr Carr suggests, we come to the conclusion that the inevitable result of the application of the proper test would be a finding that the action of the Appellants was within the band of reasonableness, in which event we should simply allow the appeal; or alternatively, whether it would be necessary for us to return the matter to the Tribunal to enable it to consider all the circumstances in the light of the proper test. The answer to that question is better given we think after we have obtained the Chairman's notes so that we can be in the position that the Tribunal was in, with all the facts before it at our fingertips. Accordingly, we shall adjourn the whole matter until the Chairman's notes are available.