United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR N DE SILVA (of Counsel) Instructed by: Ms S Fern Messrs Macfarlanes Solicitors 10 Norwich Street London EC4A 1BD


 


LORD JOHNSTON: This is an appeal at the instance of the employer/appellant against the finding of the Employment Tribunal that it had jurisdiction to hear an application by the employee/respondent to it claiming unfair dismissal upon the basis that he had the necessary qualifying two year period of employment. In order, however, to achieve that position the tribunal under the background of s.218 of the 1996 Act relating to continuous employment, had to hold that there had been a transfer of a relevant undertaking involving the respondent in the term of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981. The tribunal did so hold.

1. In the preliminary hearing, Mr De Silva, who appeared the appellants, attacked the decision of the tribunal essentially on four grounds:

(1) the failure of the tribunal to consider whether the respondent was an employee of the former employer before 28th February 1998 (to call it that for the sake of the argument);

(2) the tribunal's finding that the respondent, as an individual, constituted an undertaking was unsound in law;

(3) the tribunal's finding that the work before and after his recruitment was similar was contrary to the evidence and could be categorised as perverse;

(4) the tribunal's finding that there was, in any event, a transfer against the background of the relevant cases to this issue, so far as they can be rationalised.

2. For the purposes of a preliminary hearing we need to go no further that to consider and take the view that this case raises an important point on a number of issues which certainly justifies the matter going to a full hearing on the legal questions that Mr De Silva has enunciated and we shall so order.