Employer Pays Price for ‘Abject’ Failures in Disciplinary Process

Dismissing an employee for misconduct without first engaging in a transparent and fair disciplinary process is the legal equivalent of holding a gun to your head. In a case on point, an Employment Tribunal (ET) did not mince words in publicly exposing an employer’s abject procedural…

Nov 06, 2022

A gas engineer who had risen to a senior management role in the company for which he worked was summoned to a meeting on his return from a business trip. He was informed that a client had complained about allegedly non-compliant gas installation works and that he was being suspended with immediate effect.

When he subsequently attended what was described as a fact-finding meeting, he was told that he was only there to answer questions, not to ask them. He was given no advance notice of what would be discussed at the meeting or who would be in attendance, and was not informed of any of its findings.

He remained in the dark as to the allegations against him and potential outcomes when he was invited to a disciplinary meeting. The meeting consisted of a prepared statement being read to him confirming that he was being summarily dismissed for gross misconduct. An appeal against that decision was later dismissed.

Upholding his unfair dismissal complaint, the ET found that it necessarily followed from the absence of a reasonable investigation that the company had no genuine or reasonable belief that he was guilty of misconduct. There was no evidence on which to base such a belief and his dismissal therefore fell outside the range of responses open to a reasonable employer.

The ET ruled that his compensation should be uplifted by 25 per cent to reflect the company’s abject failure to follow any fair process. It had consciously chosen not to provide him with details of the allegations or evidence against him and had reached conclusions without giving him an opportunity to be heard.

The company was ordered to pay him a basic award of £2,284 and a compensatory award of £11,751. He was also awarded £501 in accrued but unpaid holiday pay. Had he not succeeded in finding alternative employment within a week of his dismissal, the compensatory award would have been substantially higher.

Landlord of Converted Office Block Pays Price for Breaching Fire Safety Rules

To what extent should landlords who have breached fire safety rules be entitled to recover the costs of remedying such breaches from tenants by way of service charges? The Upper Tribunal (UT) considered that important issue in a case concerning a former office building that had been converted into 96 flats. The building came to the attention of the local fire and rescue service when its fire alarm was disabled by a leak. A fire officer attended and found evidence that fire compartmentation and…

Representing Yourself in Employment Proceedings is a Recipe for Muddle

Those who choose to represent themselves in employment proceedings, without the benefit of legal advice, often have enormous difficulty in getting their real complaints across. That was certainly so in the case of a woman who claimed to have been so badly treated by her employer that she was forced to resign. The woman had been in her job for less than three months when she resigned. The fees her employer had paid to a recruitment agency when she was taken on – which came to £945 – were…

Logistics Operative Succeeds in Post-Termination Victimisation Complaint

Victimisation of workers does not necessarily come to an end with the termination of their employment. The point was made by the case of a logistics operative who was labelled a troublemaker by a member of his former employer’s senior management team. Whilst working for his former employer, the operative, who suffered from anxiety and depression, lodged a grievance and issued an Employment Tribunal (ET) complaint of disability discrimination. Both those steps were agreed to be protected acts.…