United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	IN PERSON
For the Respondents	NO APPEARANCE OR REPRESENTATION BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE RESPONDENTS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): This is an appeal against the refusal by the Registrar to extend time to Mr Wren to enable his Notice of Appeal to be accepted by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

The Notice of Appeal was received by the Employment Appeal Tribunal 55 days out of time.

The chronology relating to this matter may be shortly stated. There was a hearing before the Employment Tribunal on 3 April 1998. The Tribunal was asked to adjudicate upon the Applicant's complaint of unfair dismissal brought against Mr Wren and another named person. Their conclusion was that the Applicant had been unfairly dismissed and the First Respondent, that is Mr Wren, was ordered to pay her the sum of £2,524 by way of compensation.

The decision of the Tribunal was recorded in writing dated 16 April, when it was sent to the parties on that date. Prior to the hearing on 3 April Mr Wren had been represented by a firm of solicitors, but he appeared in person at the Tribunal hearing. Because the solicitors were listed as his representative on the IT1 the Tribunal's Decision was dispatched to them on 16 April.

What then happened was that the successful Applicant, through her solicitors, wrote to the Appellant and demanded the payment of the sums held to be due. At that date, that is in early June, he had not received a copy of the Tribunal's Decision, got in touch with his solicitors and was sent it, so that he received it on 17 June, together with the accompanying leaflet. He applied on the same day, that is 17 June, for the Industrial Tribunal to review its previous decision and that application was refused by the Tribunal in a decision which was sent to him on 22 June.

The leaflet to which I have referred states in clear terms the rights of parties in relation to a decision with which they disagree. The leaflet makes it plain that there is a 41 day time limit for appealing; that the time for appealing dates from the date when the Decision of the Industrial Tribunal was sent to the parties (rather than the date when it was received by them) and further makes clear that time is not extended by the proposed Appellant applying to the Employment Tribunal for a review of the decision against which an appeal is to be made.

Had Mr Wren properly read that leaflet, which he fully acknowledges he received on 17 June, he would have realised that he had a relatively short period of time in which to lodge his Notice of Appeal. He operates his own business. He has to look after his own affairs entirely on his own and he accepted that effectively his paper work was not up to date, but that he dealt with the matter as soon as he found time to do so. He accepted that he had not read, with care, the leaflet which had been sent to him.

The Notice of Appeal was received by the Employment Appeal Tribunal on 22 July 1998. In this case I am not prepared to extend time for the lodging of a Notice of Appeal. Whilst I am grateful to Mr Wren for the full and honest explanation which he has given for not filing one in time, and whilst I accept, in full, that the Decision arrived on his desk only on 17 June, I am satisfied that he had plenty of opportunity and time to lodge a Notice of Appeal in accordance with the 42 day time limit of which he should have been aware. But, even if he had not managed to get the Notice of Appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal by the end of June, it does seem to me that he should have lodged the Notice of Appeal with the Employment Appeal Tribunal well before 22 July 1998, or even communicated his difficulties to the Employment Appeal Tribunal if he genuinely was experiencing them.

Accordingly, applying the principles laid down in United Arab Emirates v Abdelghafar [1995] ICR 65 and in the exercise of my discretion, I am not prepared to extend time for the appeal in this case which must therefore be dismissed.