United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	No appearance or representation by or on behalf of the Appellant


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE J BURKE QC

1. In this case the Tribunal found that the employers had unfairly dismissed Mr Knotts for redundancy. The unfairness was procedural; in relation to the job of Area Manager, he had not been interviewed when he should have been.
2. We understand from the Notice of Appeal that, at the end of the hearing, the Tribunal did not hear any submissions on compensation or on the application to the facts of the Polkey principle; but without any submissions, as it would seem from the Notice of Appeal, they set out to consider the application of the Polkey principle to the facts which they had found.
3. They then came to the conclusion, in paragraph 8, that it was impossible to put a realistic or any figure on loss and that any award they made would have been affected (but they do not say cancelled out) by payments that Mr Knotts had already received.
4. Mr Knotts, in his Notice of Appeal attacks that conclusion of the Tribunal. We need say no more than that, having read the papers, we regard his appeal, as set out in paragraph 6 of his Notice of Appeal, as arguable; and therefore it should go forward to a full hearing. Category C, an hour and a half, usual rules as to Skeletons.
5. We should make it clear that Mr Knotts has not attended today; he wrote a letter to the Employment Appeal Tribunal on 7 October of this year, saying that he was unable to attend the hearing and was unable to afford help with representation. He sent us a Skeleton Argument; we have therefore proceeded on the basis of our reading of the papers without his attendance.