United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

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


 


MR JUSTICE LINDSAY:

1. This is an appeal against the order of the Registrar. The matter concerns the Executive Committee for the Time Being of the Longtown Social Club on the one hand and Mr E Farrell on the other. This is the appeal of Mr Farrell.
2. There was a hearing at the Employment Tribunal on the 17 to 19 March 1999 which led to a decision which was sent to the parties on the 16 April 1999. Mr Farrell's claim for unlawful deduction from wages was dismissed on withdrawal but he did succeed in that his claim for unfair dismissal was held to be well founded and the Social Club was required to pay some £7054 odd by way of compensation.
3. On the 26 May (or bearing date the 26 May, purporting to be signed as at that day there was a Notice of Appeal on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Social Club. On Friday 28 May the 6 weeks from the sending of the decision expired. That was a bank holiday weekend; the 31st was a Monday bank holiday. The Notice of Appeal bearing date the 26 May was stamped at the Employment Appeal Tribunal as received on the 1 June. On the 15 June, the club asked for an extension of time for lodging of the Notice of Appeal. They claimed that the application had, indeed, been posted on the 26 May 1999 by first class post. The 26th was a Wednesday and there was therefore good reason to expect, that in the ordinary course of first class post, the Notice would have been received not later than the Friday 28th, and possibly the very next day, the Thursday.
4. On the 1 July, Mr Farrell's advisers indicated that they opposed the extension of the time which the club sought. However, on the 19 August the Registrar extended time to the 1 June, thus, of course, validating the Notice of Appeal that had been apparently signed on the 26 May but received on the 1 June. The Registrar gave no reason for her decision at that stage, as is the usual practice. She later was asked to give reasons and did give reasons on the 27 August. She indicated, it had been verified in the Employment Appeal Tribunal office that the envelope which contained the Notice of Appeal had indeed borne the postmark of the 26 May. Therefore the Employment Appeal Tribunal was willing to accept, from its own records, that the Notice of Appeal had been posted by first class post on a date which should have led to its arriving before the expiry of the time for the Notice of Appeal to be served. On the 9 September, Mr Farrell indicated, by his representatives the Carlisle & District Citizens Advice Bureau,

"We wish to appeal against the Registrar's decision to extend the time for filing the Notice of Appeal".

5. The Registrar's decision as I have mentioned is dated the 19 August. There are only five days allowed for an appeal against a registrar's interlocutory order of such a kind as here relevant. That is provided at Rule 1(2). Accordingly if Mr Farrell had wished to lodge an appeal, as later transpired to be the case, he should have lodged it by the 25 August 1999. However, as the chronology that I have mentioned indicates, there was no appeal until the 9 September 1999.
6. Mr Farrell is therefore in a difficult position in that the more he insists that time limits provided by the Rules are strictly to be enforced, the more he disables his own appeal against the Registrar's decision. That the application by letter from the Carlisle and District Citizens Advice Bureau was not sent by that Bureau by the 9 September is itself a sufficient ground for dismissing this appeal.
7. Moreover, examining the reasons given by the Learned Registrar in the letter of the 27 August, one can see that there is a compelling reason here to grant further time, namely that the Employment Appeal Tribunal's own records show that the Notice of Appeal was sent off in sufficient time, as it should have proved to be, to be lodged before the expiry of the six weeks.
8. This is not a case of the kind which one not uncommonly encounters where a party insists that the matter was sent off in good time but where the Employment Appeal Tribunal has no good reason to believe that that is the case. Here the Employment Appeal Tribunal's own office identifies, from the envelope and the postmark on it, that the Notice was sent on the 26 May 1999 by first class post. That seems to me a good reason for exercising the discretion in the Social Club's favour, as of course, the Registrar did. Exercising the discretion afresh, and paying regard to that fact, I would have been inclined, even had the Appeal of Mr Farrell against the registrar's order been in time, to uphold the Registrar's decision. But when I bear in mind that Mr Farrell's appeal is itself out of time, that seems yet a further reason for upholding the Registrar's decision. Accordingly I dismiss the appeal against the Registrar's order.