Pickersgill v Employment Service

An Employment Appeal Tribunal may dispense with procedural requirements where the interests of justice so require, but its decision to insist on compliance will be upheld unless it is legally or irrationally unsound. Summary reasons are brief reasons produced quickly. They do not ordinarily provide a sufficient basis for an appeal where extended reasons are required by the applicable rules. Extended reasons may lawfully clarify or remedy defects in summary reasons. Where the alleged error concerns the distinction between serious and gross misconduct, the actual use made of unauthorised computer access is irrelevant if the tribunal treated the conduct as serious misconduct only. The absence of any explanation for failing to seek extended reasons in time is also a relevant discretionary consideration.

The appellant was dismissed by the Employment Service for conduct concerning a passport and approximately 70 instances of unauthorised access to the respondent’s computer system. Her unfair-dismissal claim was rejected by an Employment Tribunal, which gave summary reasons.

She appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal without obtaining extended reasons. The Employment Appeal Tribunal declined to exercise its discretion under rule 39(2) of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules 1993 to permit the substantive appeal to proceed on summary reasons alone, and dismissed the appeal. The appellant renewed her application for permission to appeal, challenging that discretionary decision.

1. Application refused. Lord Justice Keene delivered the principal judgment and Lord Justice Aldous agreed. The Employment Appeal Tribunal had properly exercised its discretion under rule 39(2) of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules 1993.
2. Rule 3(1)(c) normally requires extended reasons to be served before an appeal is instituted. Summary reasons are brief reasons produced quickly. The requirement for extended reasons exists because a detailed explanation is ordinarily needed if the matter is to proceed further.
3. The Employment Tribunal had placed in quotation marks a passage which was not an accurate quotation from the respondent’s disciplinary rules. The apparent passage combined the disciplinary code with evidence apparently given orally about the usual penalty. Although the source could not be established with certainty, extended reasons could lawfully have remedied the defect. There was no legal bar to correcting or clarifying the summary reasons in that way.
4. The Employment Appeal Tribunal was also entitled to conclude that the use made of the unauthorised access was irrelevant in the circumstances. The disciplinary rules made the use relevant to the distinction between gross and serious misconduct, but the Employment Tribunal had treated the conduct as serious misconduct, so that distinction did not affect the decision.
5. The absence of any explanation for the failure to apply for extended reasons in time, and the absence of an appeal against the refusal of that out-of-time application, were matters the Employment Appeal Tribunal was entitled to take into account. There was no real prospect of a successful appeal.

Order: application for permission to appeal refused.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: dismissed the appellant’s appeal from the Employment Tribunal and refused to allow the substantive appeal to proceed on summary reasons alone.
• Employment Tribunal: rejected the unfair-dismissal claim, finding that the dismissing officer had a genuine belief supported by reasonable grounds, had conducted a reasonable investigation, followed a fair procedure, and acted within the range of reasonable responses.