Sayers v Cambridgeshire County Council

In a work-related stress claim, general awareness that excessive work may cause illness does not by itself make psychiatric injury to a particular employee reasonably foreseeable. The court must assess the employee’s workload, working hours, personal vulnerability known to the employer, and any plain indications of impending harm to health. An employer is ordinarily entitled to assume that an employee can withstand the normal pressures of the post unless particular warning signs exist.

The Working Time Regulations 1998 applied to a senior operations manager who lacked autonomous decision-taking powers. Breach of the 48-hour limit did not create a private action for statutory damages. The Framework (Health and Safety) Directive 89/391/EEC did not have direct effect on the facts, and the 2003 amendment to the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 was not retrospective.

The claimant, a senior social services manager, claimed damages from her former employer for a depressive episode suffered in August 2002. She relied on common-law negligence, breach of the implied term of trust and confidence, contractual obligations concerning working time and health and safety, breach of statutory duty, and directly effective rights under European directives.

She alleged excessive workload, excessive hours, inadequate management, failures concerning restructuring, and failures to carry out risk assessments. The central issues were causation, reasonable foreseeability of psychiatric injury, breach, the applicability and enforcement of the Working Time Regulations 1998, direct effect, and the retrospective effect of the 2003 amendment regulations.

1. Claim dismissed. The claimant’s depressive episode was caused by her underlying predisposition, difficulties concerning her reduced and changing role after restructuring, failure to obtain a post elsewhere, and the supervision meeting on 13 August 2002. Earlier overwork and relationship difficulties were background rather than causative.
2. The common-law claim failed on foreseeability. The Council knew that the claimant worked long hours, complained of overwork, had occasionally become upset, and that other employees had suffered illness. Those matters, individually and cumulatively, did not make psychiatric injury to her reasonably foreseeable. She had a successful career, had not disclosed her psychiatric history, and had not shown plain indications of impending harm to health.
3. The practical guidance in Hatton v Sutherland [2002] ICR 613 remained guidance rather than a statutory code. It had to be applied with the ordinary principles of employer’s liability and the particular facts of the case. The Council had nevertheless handled the claimant’s workload inadequately before 2001, although that breach was not causative. Its later restructuring and handling of the earlier grievance were effective steps.
4. The implied term of trust and confidence required conduct, without reasonable and proper cause, calculated or likely objectively to destroy or seriously damage the employment relationship. The claimant established neither breach nor the necessary foreseeability of psychiatric harm.
5. The Working Time Regulations 1998 applied. The claimant’s work was measured and predetermined, and she was not a managing executive or person with autonomous decision-taking powers. She had worked beyond the average 48-hour limit, but the breach was not causative. Regulation 4 did not create a separate civil action for statutory damages because the Regulations supplied specific criminal and employment tribunal enforcement mechanisms.
6. The Framework Directive was capable of extending to mental health, but its general principles were not unconditional and sufficiently precise to confer directly enforceable rights. Regulation 22 of the 1999 Regulations excluded civil liability, and the 2003 amendment had no retrospective effect. The claimant therefore had no viable statutory or directly effective European-law claim.