United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR C BAYLIS (of Counsel) Messrs Sharples & Company Solicitors 108 Beaufort Street Chelsea London SW3 6BU


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): The purpose of this hearing is to determine whether there is an arguable point of law raised in a prospective appeal against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal held at Ashford in Kent on 11th June 1996. By their decision, which was unanimous, the Industrial Tribunal held that the applicant, Mrs Rodwell, had been unfairly dismissed, and she was awarded compensation.

The succinct grounds of appeal are set out in a skeleton argument. The grounds essentially may be put in this way, that the Industrial Tribunal has substituted its own view for that of the employer, and that the tribunal have failed to consider whether Mr Hodgkin's decision, he being the decision maker, fell within the band of reasonable responses of a reasonable employer.

This was a redundancy case and a selection for redundancy. The tribunal were concerned to investigate the question as to whether she had been fairly selected for redundancy.

The essential point in this case, as it seems to us reading the Industrial Tribunal's decision, is that they concluded that the selection was unfair, mostly because the employers had failed to put forward any evidence, either from the decision maker himself, or any contemporaneous documentation to show that the criteria by which selection was effected were objective so that the selection decisions were not subjectively based. In those circumstances, it seems to us, that the tribunal were entitled to conclude that the selection of her for redundancy was unfair. By doing so, they have not substituted their own decision for that of the employer. Rather, they have arrived at their conclusion because they were not satisfied that they had been given material on which they could have concluded that Mr Hodgkin had arrived at a fair conclusion. Had that evidence been available and the Industrial Tribunal had then gone on to substitute its own decision, that would have been wrong. As we read it, the decision of the tribunal, was well set out, well thought out, and is one with which we cannot interfere. Accordingly, it seems to us, that this appeal must be dismissed.