United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR S STANTON-DUNNE (Solicitor) Messrs Merricks Solicitors 207-208 Moulsham Street Chelmsford Essex CM2 0LG


 


MR JUSTICE MAURICE KAY

1. This is a preliminary hearing in relation to an appeal from a decision of an Employment Tribunal sitting in Watford. The Tribunal held that there had been an unfair dismissal for reasons of redundancy and it awarded Mr Poullai a compensatory award of £19,420.58.
2. Before us on behalf of Coleridge Business Services Ltd, Mr Stanton-Dunne has sought to persuade us that there are four arguable grounds of appeal against the decision of the Employment Tribunal. We told him, at the outset of the hearing, that we were minded to give permission for his third and fourth grounds to proceed to a full hearing. Those are respectively complaints about paragraph 43 of the decision of the Employment Tribunal, which is suggested is replete with perversity, and the assessment of compensation having been based on the salary level which Mr Poullai had been enjoying before his post of Print Production Manager had become redundant. We remain of the view that those are arguable grounds.
3. We were initially sceptical about grounds one and two. However, having heard Mr Stanton-Dunne we have all come to the conclusion that those too ought now to go for a full hearing. The first of those grounds relates to when the decision to make the Print Production Manager post was made by the company's Board of Directors. The second relates to consultation. There may be difficulties in these grounds particularly in relation to the first. It may be possible to develop a more informed view of the issues upon a perusal of the Chairman's Notes of Evidence.
4. It is unnecessary and probably undesirable for us to say more about these grounds at this stage we simply give permission for the matter to proceed. It will be listed in category C, for half a day. There will be an order that the chairman be requested to supply his Notes of Evidence and the usual directions for skeleton arguments will follow. We direct that Mr Stanton-Dunne lodges an amended ground of appeal within 14 days reflecting his skeleton argument and the contents of the letter of 27^th November.