United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	No appearance by or on behalf of the Appellant


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE CLARK: These proceedings were commenced by the Applicant, Mr Searle, presenting an Originating Application to the Employment Tribunal on 6 August 1998.

The claim was resisted on the detailed grounds appearing in the Respondent's Notice of Appearance lodged on 20 August 1998.

At a directions hearing held on 20 October 1998, a Chairman, Mr C R Ash, sitting alone at the Norwich Employment Tribunal identified two issues only for determination:

(1) Whether the Applicant suffered an unauthorised deduction from his wages in respect of holiday pay, and

(2) Whether he was entitled to payment of wages when attending a course run by his trade union.

Those issues came on for hearing before the same Chairman, again sitting alone at Norwich on 3 November 1998. By a decision promulgated with summary reasons on 10 November both claims were dismissed.

By a Notice of Appeal dated 17 December 1998 the Applicant appealed against the decision dated 10 November 1998. He did not lodge a copy of the Tribunal's extended reasons for that decision as required by Rule 3(1)(c) of the EAT Rules.

This omission was pointed out to him and on 7 January 1999 he applied to the Chairman for extended reasons. That application was out of time, the Tribunal Rules requiring that application to be made within 21 days of promulgation of the decision with summary reasons. That application was dismissed as being out of time by letter dated 27 January 1999.

Against that refusal the present appeal was brought by a letter dated 30 January. It is this appeal which is now before us for a preliminary hearing.

The Appellant has indicated, most recently by a letter dated 4 May 1999, that he will not be attending this hearing. Accordingly we have considered the matter on the papers. Our view is as follows:

(1) The question of whether to extend time for providing extended reasons lies with the Employment Tribunal. No grounds are advanced before us to suggest that in refusing to extend time the Chairman has wrongly exercised his discretion.

(2) We have power under the EAT Rules, Rule 39(2) to dispense with the need for extended reasons where it is possible fairly to determine the appeal on the basis of the summary reasons provided by the Employment Tribunal.

(3) If we were to take that course in this case we would inevitably conclude that the Appellant has failed to advance any arguable grounds for interfering with the Chairman's original decision to dismiss the claims.

In these circumstances we shall dismiss the present appeal. It follows that the original appeal lodged on 17 December 1998 must also be dismissed.