United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT / RESPONDENT
For the Respondent


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): Mr Franks trading as D. M. Upholstery, was ordered by an Industrial Tribunal to pay the Applicant, Mrs Thorpe, £600 by way of a redundancy payment and £159 in respect of holiday pay.

Both unrepresented parties had appeared before an Employment Tribunal at Manchester on 9 March 1998.

The decision was sent to the parties on 17 April 1998. The Notice of Appeal against the decision was lodged with the Employment Appeal Tribunal 39 days out of time. The learned Registrar in those circumstances had to consider whether time should be extended and, having considered the explanation put forward by the Appellant, she refused to extend time.

In the course of his representation to the Registrar, the Appellant indicated that "My original application dated 30 April 1998 obviously has been lost in transit". There was no record that such a document had been received here, and no evidence has been provided to show that a letter was returned by the Post Office. He did not get in touch with the Employment Appeal Tribunal prior to lodging the Notice of Appeal in this case. He did so by a letter which purported to be dated 30 April and was received here on 7 July.

The Registrar obviously took the view, as do I, that there is no reason to believe that the letter setting out the appeal was, in fact, posted at the time when it was dated. There is no explanation as to how the delay could have occurred.

It seems to me that this is a case therefore, where there has been no proper explanation advanced for the delay in lodging a Notice of Appeal and that such explanation, as has been advanced, does not excuse the late filing of it.

The Respondent's contention is that the Appellant, Mr Franks, is simply trying to avoid having to pay the award and that the appeal is designed to achieve delay. The Appellant has not appeared before me today but has invited me to take into account, which I do, a letter which he addressed to the Court dated 17 January 1999 which was in fact received today, this morning. He submitted as follows:

"I will submit a full transcript and the tape of the Registrar will accept this recently discovered evidence. I also intend to produce the tape to the Legal Aid Board as I do believe Mrs Thorpe has misused the Legal Aid System.

Please note that these statements have been filed in lieu of my attendance. I did originally intend to attend but not having filed the papers in the required time I though, until your secretary telephoned at 3 pm on 17/11/98, that no further papers would be allowed and my case dismissed."

What he appears to be saying is that there is now further material which shows that the Industrial Tribunal's decision was faulty, hence the reference to "recently discovered evidence", but he also appears to accept that, in this case on the papers as originally presented to the Registrar, it was clear that his case would be dismissed.

The second part of his letter was entirely correct. It seems to me that he has provided the Court with no satisfactory excuse for the delay in filing a Notice of Appeal in time and accordingly, his appeal must be dismissed.