United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

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


 


JUDGE J ALTMAN:

1. This is an appeal from the Employment Tribunal sitting at Sheffield on 7 April 2000. The decision was that the Respondents were ordered to pay the Appellant £113.80 in full settlement of all claims and it appears that this came about, according to the Chairman in his Extended Reasons, in the following way:

"This settlement was negotiated in the presence of the tribunal and the applicant and respondents were both made fully aware. The above terms covered all items of claim. The respondent's application for costs is refused."

2. The Appellant has not been able to attend the Employment Appeal Tribunal today and we have proceeded in his absence. In the Notice of Appeal he makes complaint that the Chairman proceeded in a way that was contrary to the principles of law in that he did not follow the proper procedure of a Tribunal. The Appellant also complains that there was an error of law in the Tribunal's failing to grant a review because the decision was wrongly made as a result of an error on the part of the Tribunal staff and the interests of justice require such a review.
3. Dealing with the first of those now, the reference to Tribunal staff is a reference to the administrative procedures by which a Tribunal hearing comes about in the office of the Employment Tribunals. It does not relate to the way in which a Chairman, who is the judicial figure with the Members, handles a hearing.
4. The history of the matter briefly is that the Appellant began work for the Respondents in October 1999. He said it was 5 October, the Respondents said it was 7 October. Had this matter gone to a hearing that conflict may have been critical because there is agreement between the parties that employment ended on 3 November 1999. It follows therefore that the question as to whether the Appellant had enough service, namely one month, to entitle him to one week's notice of termination was an issue that was to be contested before the Tribunal and both parties may have been at risk in relation to it. Instead of starting the proceedings by simply calling upon one of the parties to begin, the Chairman spent some time it appears asking the Appellant what he wanted and the Appellant said it was the sum of money of £113.80. The Respondents accepted the Chairman's invitation to agree to pay that money and the order was recorded as having been settled by consent.
5. The Appellant felt at a disadvantage. He applied for a review of the hearing and one of the facts that emerges is that he was unexpectedly asked, just before the case began, to get five complete sets of documents. That took him some time to do and he said that he was confused, to put it mildly. He felt that he had supplied enough comprehensive information and did not realise that he was going to be asked to spell out exactly what he wanted. He realised afterwards that he had forgotten to refer to his entitlement to one week's pay in lieu of notice. He said in his application for review it was £300. That must have been wrong because from the papers we have seen his monthly pay was something over £500. But whether or not that was wrong, because of his confusion and difficulty he asked for a review. On 6 May the Employment Tribunal declined to grant a review on the following grounds:

"Your letter dated 25 May 2000 has been referred to the chairman who refuses your request for a review. The applicant was specifically asked by the chairman over a period of not less than ten minutes to itemise his claim, at the end of that ten minutes he said it was £113.80. The respondent then agreed to pay that sum. The application for review has no reasonable prospect of success."

6. In preparation for the hearing and in order to clarify the way in which the matter proceeded the Appellant helpfully furnished an affidavit to this Employment Appeal Tribunal setting out the matter. He complained that the Chairman did not follow the procedure set out in the Employment Tribunal Services booklet which provides for the parties to give evidence and call witnesses and have an opportunity to sum up their case. He points out that none of this occurred and he observed that the booklet also says that a review can take place where a party considers there has been a procedural mistake, which is what the Appellant says occurred here, and the procedural mistake was that it was not acknowledged as a request in relation to a procedural mistake.
7. In reply the Chairman has given his response to the effect that at the beginning of the hearing the Tribunal was confronted with a substantial bundle of paper work and he asked the Appellant to itemise what the claim was for and this took some ten minutes.
8. The order by consent required both parties to alter their positions. The Appellant agreed to accept that sum of money in full settlement of all claims he might have. The Respondents agreed to pay the sum of money which they were denying they were liable to pay, presumably to avoid any further hearing. That was, on the face of it, a concluded agreement. We can understand that in retrospect the Appellant forgot to mention the week's pay and wishes that he had and he has relied upon the booklet that he received setting out the rules of procedure.
9. We would draw attention to Rule 9 of the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 1993 in Schedule 1 of those Regulations which provides:

"The tribunal shall make such enquiries of persons appearing before it and witnesses as it considers appropriate and shall otherwise conduct the hearing in such manner as it considers most appropriate for the clarification of the issues before it and generally to the just handling of the proceedings."

10. It is frequently the practice of Chairmen of Tribunals, and generally of assistance to the parties, for some time to be spent before the hearing proper begins in clarifying exactly what the issues are. This often enables any irrelevant and extraneous material to be excluded and enables everyone to focus on the issues that have to be contested. It seems to us that nothing that happened in this case is any different from that general procedure which is generally followed.
11. The fact that the procedures for the calling of witnesses, the cross-examination of witnesses and the summing up of evidence never took place is simply because that part of the proceedings was never reached and the reason it was never reached was that, on the face of it, the Respondents were prepared to pay everything that the Appellant was at that time asking. It is unfortunate that the Appellant did not have at the front of his mind his loss of one week's pay for his allegation that he did not receive full notice, but who knows what may have happened if that had been mentioned?
12. It may have been that an agreement may not have been reached, but once the agreement was reached and the Appellant was given the opportunity to say what he wanted, we have to ask ourselves whether the Chairman erred in law in the way he conducted those proceedings. He conducted the proceedings in accordance with the generally accepted way of proceeding and we have seen nothing on which an argument can be based that there was any error of law in the way that he proceeded.
13. This matter has come before us by way of preliminary hearing to determine whether there is a point of law capable of being argued in full before the Employment Appeal Tribunal. We can discern none and therefore this appeal must be dismissed at this stage.