United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION ON OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANTS


 


JUDGE WILKIE: Notice was sent to Mr Liburd on 27^th September of this hearing of his appeal for today. He has not attended and he has not indicated one way or the other that he would be attending. The ELAAS representative has been on hand to assist him if he had wished should he have attended but it now being after 12.30 pm it is clear that he is not coming and therefore we are dealing with this matter in his absence.

1. It is an appeal by Mr Liburd against the unanimous decision of the Employment Tribunal sitting in Manchester on 29^th March of this year. The decision, sent to the parties on 20^th April, was that his application claiming to have been the victim of race discrimination in the course of the written application for the job with the Manchester City Council be dismissed as having been presented out of time.
2. The Employment Tribunal on evidence before it found that the Applicant knew that he had been unsuccessful in his application for the job on or about 7^th July 1998 and that in order to comply with the relevant 3 month time limit the application should have been received by the Tribunal on or before 8^th October 1998, in fact, the application wasn't made until 27th December 1998 and therefore the Tribunal had to consider whether, in all the circumstances, it would be just an equitable to extend the time for the submission of such application so as to treat the application as being in time.
3. In paragraph 2 of the decision the Tribunal sets out, in considerable detail, the sequence of events. In particular, it records in (e) that according to Mr Liburds' evidence "he specifically indicated to the Tribunal that by that stage (early August 1998) he felt that he had been further victimised both in connection with his application for the job and also in connection with the refusal of Manchester City Council to provide him with explanations as to why he had been unsuccessful in his job application".
4. In sub paragraph (f) it goes on to state that despite the very clear indication which the applicant gave to the Tribunal as to the extent of his feelings in early August 1998, the applicant took no steps whatsoever to pursue his sense of dissatisfaction. In point of fact, the application was lodged on 27^th December 1998. Apparently, in the meantime, at the end of October he had discovered that a copy of a letter explaining why he hadn't been shortlisted for the job was sent to a third party.
5. In the light of what the Tribunal found on the basis of his specific evidence before it the Tribunal concluded that the application could and should have been submitted no later than the middle of August 1998 and certainly well within the three month period which expired on 8^th October 1998. On that basis the tribunal found that it was not just and equitable to permit the application to be lodged out of time and it therefore dismissed the application.
6. We can find nothing, having perused the notice of appeal and the skeleton argument which has been provided to this Tribunal to persuade us that there is any reasonably arguable point in this appeal. We can find no error of law in the approach of the employment tribunal. Furthermore, the findings of fact upon which they acted were plainly open to them on the evidence that they heard. Therefore we conclude that there is no reasonably arguable point to permit this appeal to go through to a full hearing. Therefore we dismiss this appeal at this stage.