United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR J McDONALD (Consultant) Tara Management Services Tara Hill 7 Woodstock Drive Worsley Manchester M28 2NP


 


JUDGE D LEVY QC: Variety Floors Group were the subject of the complaint by Mr R.A. Beale, originally in 1995. His complaint came before an Industrial Tribunal at Reading on 22 June 1995.

There were two questions for the Industrial Tribunal to decide. First of all, whether Mr Beale was an employee; that was decided in his favour. Secondly, whether he was entitled to a redundancy payment; that was decided against him.

The employee appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal as to that finding. There was a preliminary hearing which led to a full hearing, and at the full hearing which took place on 7 February 1996 the matter was remitted back to the Industrial Tribunal for a further hearing.

Mr McDonald, who has appeared (I think) for the employer throughout, did not appeal against that decision of the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

At the further hearing on 28 May 1996 the Industrial Tribunal at Reading came to a different conclusion (Decision promulgated on 3 June 1996) than that which the Industrial Tribunal had at the first hearing. It held that the Applicant, the Respondent here, was entitled to a redundancy or notice payment. Against that, there is an application to appeal dated 28 June 1996. For completeness, I should add that this was an application to review the second decision of the Industrial Tribunal. It was made out of time and was dismissed on these grounds.

Mr McDonald's grounds of appeal are that there was no new evidence at the second hearing before the Industrial Tribunal, and the submission that was then made on the second occasion had not been made first time round.

It seems to us that that is as maybe, in this sense: If Mr McDonald's real complaint is that the February decision of the EAT was wrong, the employer's remedy was to challenge it in the Court of Appeal. There was no appeal against that and therefore there was a perfectly proper hearing on the second occasion. On the evidence before us, on that second hearing, on the submissions that were made, the Tribunal was perfectly entitled to come to the decision it did.

In these circumstances, we think that the appeal against that decision is bound to fail. There is no point of law. There are no facts in issue and therefore, in these circumstances, we cannot let this appeal go forward.

Accordingly, we will dismiss it.