United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR STUART HILL (Representative) Peninsula Business Services Limited Riverside New Bailey Street Manchester M3 5PU


 


JUDGE D PUGSLEY

1. This is a case where the Appellant seeks to appeal a compensatory award under Section 123 of the Employment Rights Act. The general thrust of their criticism is that the Tribunal misapplied, or misconstrued, the statutory test with regard to the amount of compensation to be awarded to the Respondent, in that it failed to clearly address the issue of loss which was sustained by the Respondent, in so far as that loss was attributable to the direction taken by the employer. The net result is that the Tribunal ordered the Respondents to pay a sum of money for loss of wages which went until his 65^th birthday.
2. They put it in paragraph 7(1)

"We have noted the excellent long standing employment record of Mr Brunning prior to his redundancy. He appears to be a man in excellent health who plays tennis regularly. We can see nothing about Mr Brunning which would lead us to think he would not have continued to work until he was 65, in other words the normal retirement age. Therefore we see nothing which would detract us from saying that the period of assessment of compensation should start as being until his normal retirement age given that there is ample evidence that he is unfortunately unable to get employment, principally because of his age"

Therefore they awarded him just over 8 years of continuing loss.

3. Now there are certain matters we ought to say. First, although the compensatory award afster making a "Polkey" deduction was £165,000, there was a statutory limit of £50,000. In the experience of this Tribunal, a very long period of continuing loss is unusual and questions arise whether or not it fulfils the statutory definition on the basis of which his compensation was payable. There is no allowance in this assessment that Mr Brunning has the value of the money now and has interest thereon. In other words there is no discount for the acceleration of the benefit.
4. We have cone to the view that, at least, it is arguable, and we say no more than that, that this is an award that offends the general precepts of the statute assessment of how compensation should be assessed. We therefore think it is a matter which is arguable. In saying that, as we would be at pains to point out we are not seeking to predict the ultimate result of this appeal. We think there ought to be a skeleton argument under the normal rules as to skeleton arguments. This is a class category C case with time estimate of half a day.