United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	IN PERSON
For the Respondents	MR J P PALMER (Solicitor) Messrs Croftons Television House Mount Street Manchester M2 5FA


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): This has been a review hearing to review a decision of a court presided over by His Honour Judge D.M. Levy QC and two lay members. By that decision they allowed Mr Green to proceed to a full hearing with his Notice of Appeal (in amended form) on all grounds save for the last ground which reads, "The Industrial Tribunal failed to conduct proceedings in a just manner." That ground of appeal was not allowed to be continued for the reasons given in the judgment of the court.

The purpose of this review is to review the order which was made by the Employment Appeal Tribunal that the Chairman should provide the Notes of Evidence of certain specific witnesses.

I wish to make it plain in this judgment that it is my view that Notes of Evidence are seldom helpful to the court when they are ordered, frequently they are never referred to, or never referred to extensively and for my part I shall encourage my colleagues to take a restricted view as to the circumstances in which notes should be ordered. They are a burden to Industrial Tribunal Chairmen, who are often, many months after the decision has been made, asked to reopen their notebook and decipher the notes which they have made and, it seems to me, that the ordering of notes should be done on a most sparing basis only.

In this particular case the Tribunal decision is criticised on the basis, I think, that it is not clear what the timing was of any of the events which are described in the decision. It is said in the Notice of Appeal that the Tribunal have failed to identify the date on which notice of change of terms was given to the Appellant, and which fixes in period of time the breach of contract which in its view amounted to a constructive dismissal of the Appellant.

It is Mr Green's case that there was an unfortunate hiatus between the first and second day of hearing before the Industrial Tribunal and, it is his view that the Tribunal may have, through passage of time, forgotten much of what had taken place. It is his contention that paragraph 7 of the Industrial Tribunal's decision does not accurately reflect the agreed evidence between the parties as to the availability of the job referred to in that paragraph. He says, and I see the force of it, that the Notes of Evidence would put an end to any argument as to whether there was evidence before the Tribunal that there was an extant job at Tipton.

On balance, and with some considerable reluctance, I am not prepared on this occasion to interfere with my colleague's decision. The order for the Notes of Evidence must stand. I am sceptical as to the assistance that they will be in this, as in any other case. The parties have indicated to me during the course of these short submissions, that Mr Green made a note of what he believed transpired on the first occasion and, on behalf of the West Midland Co-Operative Society Ltd, there may be some notes made by the advocate which could be transcribed and sent to the Industrial Tribunal.

If the Industrial Tribunal chairman, when he comes to write his notes, feels that he would be assisted by such documentation as there is, then the parties have indicated their willingness to provide it, and I have no reason to doubt that that would not be done, if he were to make such a request.

Accordingly, the result of this review is that the order, as made by my colleague will stand, but I give a very clear indication in this judgment that I am reluctant in every case to order Notes of Evidence. It seems to me likely that in most cases, if there is a particular issue which needs to be resolved by reference to notes, the chairman can be written to specifically on that issue and his response can be treated as an acceptable conclusion to the point.

However, a more general ordering of notes was made by this court, presided over by His Honour Judge Levy and I am not prepared to interfere with that decision by way of a review.