United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT IN PERSON


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): The purpose of this hearing was to determine whether Mr Ball has an arguable point of law in an appeal which he wishes to bring to the Employment Appeal Tribunal against the decision of an Industrial Tribunal Chairman sitting alone. The Chairman considered, as he described it, whether s. 97(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 applied. Mr Ball had made a complaint of unfair dismissal against the Prudential Assurance Company Limited.

It is his case that he was employed by them from 1st March 1996 until he was summarily dismissed as at 26th February 1998. The question therefore was did he have the requisite qualifying period of continuous employment prior to his dismissal.

The tribunal concluded that the applicant was guilty of gross misconduct. Therefore he would not have been entitled to any notice and therefore his claim was not one which fell within the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

It seems to us that there are a number of points which are arguable in this case.

Firstly, there is the question as to the procedure adopted by the Industrial Tribunal. The applicant tells us and we accept, that he understood that the purpose of the hearing before the Industrial Tribunal was to enable it to decide whether he had the requisite qualifying period of service, and that it would not be concerned to adjudicate on any of the merits. We consider there has, or may have been, some confusion as to what precisely was the nature of the hearing, and we consider that that is something which should be looked at by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in due course.

Secondly, and in any event, it seems to us that there are two further arguments which Mr Ball wishes to make. Both of them are to the effect that the tribunal did have jurisdiction to hear and determine his complaint because he did have the requisite qualifying period of service. The first way he puts the point is this. If one counts the week in which he was employed, that is the week including 1st March, and the week in which he was dismissed, that is the week including 26th February 1998, the total number of weeks of service that he had was 104 or more. But secondly, in any event, by virtue of the provisions of s. 97(2) of the Act, for the purposes of computing periods of continuous service, the Act requires, so he argues, that the period should include the period of statutory notice to which he was entitled, namely one week, and that if one included that week, again his period of continuous service would exceed the statutory minimum.

In those circumstances, it seems to us that this matter should be brought before the Employment Appeal Tribunal as soon as is practicable. I think this case should be given priority because it is possible that there will need to be a full merits hearing in due course, and the sooner that occurs the better. It will not take very long, because these are very short points. I would list it as Category C. It is a case which Judge Peter Clark could deal with. I would estimate the total time as being one hour for the arguments. Notes of Evidence are not required. At the present time I do not think that this is a case where there is an allegation of improper conduct on the part of the Industrial Tribunal, but if it should emerge that that is so, we shall have to activate the usual procedure. I do not think it needs to be activated at the present time. I have looked at the respondents' PHD form and it seems to me that there are no further directions that need to be given at this time.