United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	THE APPELLANT NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED


 


MR JUSTICE BELL: This is the preliminary hearing of the appeal of Miss Carless-Jones, as we now understand her preferred mode of address to be, against the decision of the Employment Tribunal held at Ashford, Kent on 10th, 11th and 12th April 2000 rejecting her claim of sex discrimination in the firm terms that whilst hers was a sad case and not all of her criticisms were without foundation, her claim failed and must be dismissed; "the matters which she raises do not amount to sex discrimination or, in the view of the Tribunal, really come anywhere near it. That is why her claim fails."

It is important to state that this Appeal Tribunal's jurisdiction depends entirely upon Act of Parliament and it can only entertain an appeal from the Employment Tribunal which raises an arguable point of law. It is not an appeal tribunal of general review of the Employment Tribunal's decisions.

1. At all material times the appellant was police constable in the South Wales Constabulary. In 1996 or 1997 she met a Police Sergeant Woods, a married member of the Kent County Constabulary, who lived with his family in Dover. By then Miss Carless-Jones was a police trainer. She had a longstanding difference with the South Wales force. Sometime in 1997 she and Sergeant Woods decided that they wished to live together. She decided to apply for a place at the National Police Training Centre ['NPTC'] run by the Home Office in Ashford, Kent, notwithstanding that there was an NPTC for the South Wales police force in Gwent. She would then, as she intended, apply for a transfer to the Kent force. In the meantime and thereafter she would live with her young son and Police Sergeant Wood as a family unit. She obtained her place at NPTC in Ashford on secondment from the South Wales force and obtained associated accommodation at 68 Ryelands Road, Ashford.
2. Miss Carless-Jones' complaint in her Originating Application and before the tribunal was that in respect of her attendance at the NPTC and thereafter she was discriminated against on the grounds of her sex by the senior management team at the NPTC in Ashford, particularly in respect of the accommodation she was provided and the way it was provided and the expenses which were not allowed to her when equivalent expenses were, she alleged, allowed to male colleagues, or, in any event, in the respect that she was not allowed expenses which she claimed would have been allowed to her, but for the fact that she was a woman.
3. The extended reasons for the tribunal's decision cover some 20 pages of single-spaced A4. Although Miss Carless-Jones represented herself and the Home Office was represented by Counsel, the tribunal complimented her on her presentation of her case. It concluded that some of her critique of the management of the NPTC at Ashford was not without foundation. It went into matters of fact in very considerable detail and reached conclusions for which it gave clearly expressed reasons. There is certainly nothing on the face of the extended reasons which leads us to suspect that it made any procedural errors or misdirected itself in law in any respect.
4. Miss Carless-Jones Notice of Appeal contains a complaint that she was deterred by the Chairman of the tribunal from challenging evidence adduced by the respondent and proving it was untrue on the basis of facts which the Chairman ruled to be irrelevant. Yet, the Notice of Appeal claims, some of those allegedly irrelevant matters appear in the extended reasons and appear to have been relied upon. Therefore, the Notice of Appeal suggests, the evidence heard was not balanced and not challenged as it could have been but for the course which the Chairman took at the hearing. No detail is given of exactly what matters Miss Carless-Jones had in mind when she drafted her Notice of Appeal so we cannot judge whether there is any weight in what she says. It is the duty of an appellant to bring forward her case so that this Appeal Tribunal can judge whether there is any merit in law in the challenge which is made.
5. Miss Carless-Jones did not attend the tribunal today. She was telephoned by a member of this tribunal's staff. She said that she had spoken to the office of this tribunal last week and had sent in a letter withdrawing her appeal. No such letter has in fact been received. Tribunal staff tried to telephone her this morning to ask if it was possible to send a facsimile of the letter to the tribunal's office. There was no response save by her answering service.
6. It appears that Miss Carless-Jones does want to withdraw her appeal, but, in any event, for the reasons which we have shortly given we cannot see that there is any sound challenge on a point of law to the decision which the Employment Tribunal reached. For all those reasons and in those circumstances we dismiss this appeal.