United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR S GORTON (of Counsel) Steggles & Mather Solicitors 121a Saughall Blacon Chester CH1 5ET


 


JUDGE BYRT QC: This is an appeal by the Appellant against a decision of the Industrial Tribunal sitting in Liverpool on 13 March 1996 when they unanimously dismissed a complaint for unfair dismissal because they considered they had no jurisdiction to deal with it by reason of the fact that the Appellant was past the normal retiring age of the Respondent Company. The Appellant was born in 1932; so he is now approaching the age of 64 and would have been approaching 63 at the time of his alleged dismissal in December 1995. He has worked for the Respondents since 1990. In November 1992 the Respondent Company formulated a new retirement policy for all the employees requiring them to retire at the age of 60 unless, as the result of an application made by the individual employee, they felt minded to grant an extension for 12 months.

The Tribunal found that this policy was known to all employees and it was understood by them and, indeed, it seems especially so that the Appellant did, because on two occasions he made applications for extensions, the first in December 1993 and then in November 1994. It seems that in 1995 the Respondents were not minded to grant a further extension.

Mr Gorton, who has very concisely put the points to be raised on the Tribunal's findings, suggests that they failed to focus on the precise contract within which the Appellant and Respondents were acting and, as a result they failed to attend to a crucial point of law. It is our view that whatever were the contractual terms of the original contract of employment, these were varied as a result of the implementation of the new policy in November 1992 and whatever the Appellant thought about the new policy, he fell in with it, acquiesced in it, and implicitly agreed to a variation of his original contract of employment. This is manifested by the fact that he made two applications for extension of time and did so considerably to his benefit.

In all the circumstances we do not think that there is a point of law arising on the terms of this contract.

The second point Mr Gorton raises is that the Tribunal do not appear to have made a finding as to the precise date when the Appellant's contract terminated. The Appellant says that it terminated on 14 October. The Respondents, say that it was 14 December 1995. In our view it is a matter of no significance once the Appellant passed the age of 60. Unless the Respondents had granted him a specific extension for a period of 12 months thereafter, the Tribunal had no jurisdiction as a result of section 64 of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act to entertain the claim by the Appellant.

Accordingly, whilst we have no doubt that the Appellant will be unhappy with our decision, we feel that there is no substantive point of law here to go forward for a full Tribunal and we must dismiss the appeal.