United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR COLIN PROUT (Representative) North Manchester Law Centre Unit A Harpurhey District Centre Harpurhey Manchester M9 4DH


 


JUDGE D M LEVY QC:

1. We are indebted to Mr Prout who has come to represent Mr Derrig on a preliminary ex parte hearing of his appeal. The facts are as follows.
2. Mr Derrig had been working for Greater Manchester Waste Ltd ("the Respondent") for some 14 years. On 6 March 2000 he was suspended from work. On 11 April 2000 he attended a disciplinary hearing at which he was dismissed, allegedly for fraud and theft. On 12 May 2000 there was an internal hearing against the decision to dismiss and the decision was upheld. He made a complaint to an Employment Tribunal on 22 June 2000. The Respondent put in its IT3 on 6 July.
3. There was a hearing before a Tribunal sitting at Manchester on 17 April 2001 and 14 May 2001. The reserved decision was communicated to the parties on 30 May 2001. The unanimous decision was that the Applicant was not unfairly dismissed and other complaints were also dismissed, namely that the Respondent had made unauthorised deduction from the Applicant's wages within the meaning of Part II of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and were in breach of the Applicant's contract of employment by failing to pay holiday pay.
4. We note incidentally that in the "Reserved Decision" the absence above those words of a block we normally find showing the names of representatives appearing for parties. That block enables those who read a reserved decision immediately to be given information which it is helpful for them to know. We understand from the text of the decision that Mrs Derrig appeared for her husband and a representative of the firm of solicitors which entered the Notice of Appearance, appeared for the Respondent. It would be helpful to have the name of that individual in the decision itself.
5. The Notice of Appeal alleges that there has been a failure by the Tribunal to apply the three-stage test in British Home Stores Ltd v Burchell [1978] IRLR 379 and, in particular, the Tribunal does not give reasons why it decided the employer had reasonable grounds on which to sustain that belief in the guilt of the employee of the of the misconduct alleged or had carried out as much investigation into the matter as was reasonable in all the circumstances of the case. Paragraph 7 sets out submissions made, on behalf of the Appellant before the Tribunal.
6. We always have some sympathy with an appellant who has acted without professional help in an Employment Tribunal but when we read, as we have done carefully, the full terms of the reserved decision we are satisfied that the case he put forward was fully considered by the Tribunal. It may well be that, as the Appellant complains, there was only one witness who really gave evidence before him but the Tribunal explained why it concluded that there had been a sufficiently fair disciplinary hearing and why there had been a fair appeal from the decision made. Given the matters which were involved, namely a theft of certain items, the employer was entitled to come to the decision. As the appeal decision that it was appropriate to dismiss the Appellant was in the band of reasonable responses of the Respondent, there having been a fair investigation and a fair hearing, it would not have been open to the Employment Tribunal to interfere with the decision.
7. In the circumstances, despite Mr Prout's submissions, we do not feel there is an arguable case to go forward to a full hearing. We will therefore dismiss this appeal at this stage.