United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	Mr E Jankowski Solicitor London Borough of Brent Brent Legal Services Town Hall Annexe Forty Lane Wembley Middlesex HA9 9HD


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE D PUGSLEY

1. This is an appeal from the Decision of the Employment Tribunal sitting at Watford in which it decided that the Respondent unlawfully discriminated against the Applicant by way of victimisation. In summary the Applicant's case was that in September 2000 she had seen a job advertised which she believed to be her former job as a senior practitioner in social work. She applied for it, was shortlisted and interviewed but not appointed. It was her belief that she had been victimised because of a previous Tribunal case she had brought against her employers.
2. The Tribunal identified the issues for its determination; namely whether the Applicant carried out a protected activity within the scope of section 2 of the Act; whether she was treated less favourably than others would have been treated in such circumstances and whether she was so treated by reason of the protected activity. The Tribunal reviewed the evidence it had heard; made findings of fact and set out its directions of law and the submissions it had heard before setting out in a reasoned form its conclusions. In paragraph 8 of its Decision the Tribunal gave its conclusions together with its reasons for reaching those conclusions. Tribunal conclusions are not required to be formalistic and lengthy documents. What Tribunals are required to do is to set out the main body of their findings so that a party will know why they have won or lost. Quite simply we consider that this Decision does meet that requirement.
3. The duty of this Tribunal is to be concerned with whether or not there is an error of law shown on the face of the Tribunal's Decision. Of course errors of law can include areas of perversity, where there is no evidence, or no adequate evidence to justify a conclusion. We have all had the opportunity of reading the copious submissions and legal argument made by Brent Council, by Mr Edmund Jankowski; the documents run to several pages.
4. We all unanimously say that we are not helped by a scattergun, machine gun approach to arguments of law. Rather than machine guns being put in position and arguments scattered across the field, what we needs in grounds of appeal are clear, cogent identification of what it is alleged is an error of law, not a reheating up of the arguments that were put before the Employment Tribunal below, and which manifestly in the result, failed. We believe it is arrogant for us to assume that the Tribunal below did not pay careful attention to the points made to them. It is clear they reached their Decision after taking the various points made by Mr Jankowski on behalf of the Borough of Brent in the hearing.
5. The high point of the amended grounds of appeal and the high point of the Appellant's case is that if Mr Chunilal and Mr Conniff were people who were biased, then the score showed by Ms Vincent against whom no such allegation or finding was made, were, in broad terms, roughly congruent with their assessment.
6. We are bound to say that we find that that observation is a somewhat naïve view of life, given the sophistication of the way the world works. In any event the Tribunal's findings are clearly set out in paragraph 8. What that ground of appeal is, and the other grounds of appeal, are merely an attempt to re-open the issues which had ground into dust at the first hearing. What we are really being asked to do in all these grounds of appeal is to reverse findings of fact or, in the alternative, to seek to stigmatise the Tribunal's Decision by saying that the Tribunal failed to find enough facts.
7. We are of the view that enough is enough. We have laboured to see whether there is a ground of appeal; in our view there are no grounds of appeal. This is just an attempt to make us alter the Tribunal's findings of fact which we are not empowered to do, and in those circumstances we dismiss the appeal. We say at this stage, following the new direction, unless we are required to do so, by an application either now or made within twenty one days, we do not propose to issue a transcript of this Decision under the new situation.