United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR HINDS (of Counsel) Messrs Bhardwaj & Co Solicitors 22 South Molton Street London W1Y 1DD


 


JUDGE D M LEVY QC: Ms Leticia Harding was in the employ of the London Borough of Southwark. A time came when she was dismissed following disciplinary procedures from her employ by the Borough. She felt that the dismissal was unfair and commenced proceedings in an Industrial Tribunal for a decision to that effect.

The matter came before an Industrial Tribunal sitting at London (South) on 24 and 25 October 1995. The Industrial Tribunal's Full Reasons were sent to the parties on 23 April 1996. Their decision was unanimous that the dismissal of the Applicant (the Appellant here) was fair. From that decision she wishes to appeal and her Notice of Appeal is dated 3 June 1996.

Mr Hind has appeared before us on the ex-parte application. He appeared below and therefore was fully familiar with the facts. Essentially, he says, that this is a perverse decision for a number of reasons. The reasons are contained within other grounds of appeal, but summarised briefly what he says is first of all, the Tribunal having found various parts of the Council's procedures flawed, it was perverse of them to say, at the end of the day, that there were proper procedures applied.

Secondly, he says, one charge was originally laid against the Applicant and substitute charges were then added; Ms Harding complains that she was not given an opportunity to investigate those other charges before disciplinary hearings took place.

Thirdly, he says that certain documents which were said to have been sent by the Council to Ms Harding, may not have been sent to her and there was no finding by the Industrial Tribunal as to whether documents allegedly sent were or were not received.

Fourthly, he reminds us that the husband of Ms Harding was accused of some similar dishonesty to that laid at her door and, he was not treated in the same way as she was following the disciplinary hearings. Mr Hinds says that, because of the principle of proportionality, that is wrong.

Fifthly, he reminds us that one of the procedural points on which the Council was instructed was that a witness, who presented some of the charges, was with the disciplinary team when it was considering its verdict. Mr Hinds submitted that this was so wrong that the Industrial Tribunal could not properly have found the matter in which the Council behaved procedurally satisfactory.

Finally, Mr Hinds submits that in the Full Reasons themselves there are errors of fact. One such error of fact he gives appears within paragraph 2 of the Decision.. Towards the bottom of page 3 there is this passage:

"The disciplinary hearing took place on 15 November 1994 as a result of which the Applicant was dismissed. She had exercised her right to have trade union representation. ..."

The words "trade union" is wrong. Ms Harding did have representation but it was not trade union representation. Some of the other errors he identified are matters to which we have already alluded, but in our judgment Mr Hinds is nitpicking.

In our judgment, given the facts of this case, we cannot find that the Industrial Tribunal's decision was perverse. They had the issues before them. They carefully considered the procedural faults; they carefully considered the charges; they came to a result which, in our view, is fully justified. They found that the decision of the employer was one which it was reasonable for it to take in the circumstances. They found it was one which the hypothetical reasonable employer could have made and therefore one with which they could not interfere.

Despite Mr Hinds' submissions, we can see no arguable case to go forward on the decision given by the Industrial Tribunal in this case.

In those circumstances, we dismiss this appeal at this stage.