United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	Mr M Sethi (Of Counsel) ELAAS


 


JUDGE WILSON:

1. This has been the preliminary hearing of the proposed appeal by the appellant, against the decision by the Employment Tribunal that it had no jurisdiction to hear the applicant's complaints of unfair dismissal and race discrimination because they were out of time.
2. The appellant today, has had the assistance of Mr Sethi under the provisions of ELAAS, and the case has been yet another example of how much the Tribunal is helped by such intervention. Because it is only a preliminary point, we have not gone into more than is necessary to come to a conclusion about whether there is merit in the matter going forward for full argument.
3. We have considered the technical points which Mr Sethi has put forward, concerning the deficiencies in the letter which was regarded by the Employment Tribunal as a pleading for the purposes of granting a preliminary hearing. It seems to us that there is room for arguing that the document in question, which is the letter dated 18 March 1999, which expressly states that it is not the defence, but is an application to strike out fails to comply with the requirements of rule 3(1)(c) of the Industrial Tribunal Constitution and Rules of Procedure Regulations 1993, as amended. The terms of that rule are, we note, mandatory.
4. The document does not comply with the requirements of rule 3(2)(a), and therefore there is room for the argument that the respondent was unable, technically, to bring itself within the provisions of Rule 6. These are matters of principle which perhaps, have not been scrutinised before. They are significant in this case. We therefore consider that the matter should go forward for full argument, not only concerning those matters, but concerning the other matters set out in the proposed grounds of appeal paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 in the document submitted by Mr Sethi this morning.
5. We therefore grant leave for the case to proceed to full argument on those grounds, and we give leave to amend the Notice of Appeal to include those grounds. We consider that there are substantial matters of law in this case, apart from the preliminary matter to which we referred. We think that ¾ day should be allowed for the hearing, and it should be Category A.