United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	NO APPEARANCE BY OR REPRESENTATION ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANTS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): The purpose of this hearing is to determine whether there is an arguable point of law in an appeal which Milton Keynes Services Ltd, trading as Milton Keynes Group Security, wish to advance against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal held at Bedford on 3 April 1997. The decision was sent to the parties on 8 May 1997.

It is clear from the Notice of Appeal that it is against that decision and that decision alone that the appeal has been advanced. By that decision the Tribunal concluded that the Applicant, Mr Adams, was entitled to a redundancy payment from the Respondents in the sum of £323.40 and the Respondents were ordered to pay to him £891 in respect of holiday pay. Otherwise, his various other claims were dismissed.

Prior to the hearing in April 1997, the Industrial Tribunal had had a preliminary hearing to determine who the appropriate Respondent was. There was a question which arose under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, as to whether these Respondents or another company were to be liable, if there was liability, to the Applicant, Mr Adams. That decision was given on 19 December 1996 and the conclusion in that decision was that the present Appellants were the correct Respondents. It is important to note that there was no appeal against that decision. In other words, as it seems to us, the present Appellants decided to take their chance on the liability question rather than appeal the first decision.

The Applicant was employed as a Security Guard and it was as a result of the termination of his employment that these claims were raised. The Industrial Tribunal indicated that when one reads the documents as a whole it was clear that there was a decision on a transfer of an undertaking given by the previous Tribunal and that it would be wrong for the present Tribunal to go behind it.

It seems to us in those circumstances that this is not a competent appeal on the transfer of undertakings point, since that was not the issue which concerned the Industrial Tribunal in giving their decision dated 8 May 1997, against which this is an appeal. That said, we have some sympathy with the position of the Appellants in this case because, as they rightly point out in their Notice of Appeal, the law has to some extent become clarified, some might say less clarified, as a result of the European Court's decision in the case of Suzen, but it seems to us that the technical position remains, as we have stated. This is not an appeal against the Tribunal's adjudication on that point and therefore, it does not fall for consideration here. Those were the only points that were raised by the Appellant in the Notice of Appeal.

Accordingly, it seems to us that they are not reasonably arguable in the context of the present circumstances and we must dismiss this appeal.