Ameyaw v Pricewaterhousecoopers Services Ltd

An Employment Tribunal must enter every judgment and written reasons in the public Register, subject only to the express exceptions in the Employment Tribunals (Constitution and Rules of Procedure) Regulations 2013. Rule 50 permits anonymisation and redaction, but does not permit a tribunal to remove a judgment from the Register.

Before balancing Article 8 rights against open justice, the tribunal must decide whether the information is private. Information examined at a public hearing attracts no reasonable expectation of privacy. In any event, a restriction requires clear and cogent evidence of necessary harm and must outweigh the strong interests in open justice, a fair public hearing and freedom of expression.

The claimant appealed from the London South Employment Tribunal's refusal of applications to remove, or anonymise, an earlier judgment concerning an unsuccessful strike-out application.

The earlier judgment had been entered in the public Register after an open preliminary hearing. It discussed the claimant's conduct at an earlier hearing which she maintained had been closed. More than a year later, she sought removal from the Register or a permanent anonymity order under Rule 50, relying principally on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The appeal raised whether the tribunal had power to remove the judgment, whether it had wrongly refused anonymity, whether it should have considered unapproved manuscript notes, and whether its reasons were adequate.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal correctly held that it had no power to remove the earlier judgment from the public Register. Regulation 14 and Rule 67 required entry of judgments and written reasons. Rule 50 allowed restrictions such as anonymisation or redaction, but did not authorise non-entry. The distinct national-security provision in Rule 94 did permit non-entry of written reasons in specified circumstances.

2. The claimant's Article 8 rights were not engaged. The conduct recorded in the earlier judgment had been examined at an open hearing on the strike-out application. Although the claimant disputed the account of the earlier closed hearing, she knew that the events would be publicly examined. She therefore had no reasonable expectation of privacy in that material.

3. Even if Article 8 had been engaged, the tribunal was entitled to refuse anonymity under Rule 50. The claimant had applied over a year after entry in the Register and had not sought anonymity at the relevant hearing. The earlier judgment also recorded her disagreement with the account, the difficulty in attributing conduct between her and her mother, and the possible explanation for her behaviour. Those matters did not outweigh open justice and the Article 6 and Article 10 interests in public judicial decisions.

4. The tribunal was entitled, as a case-management decision, to decline to consider unsigned and unapproved manuscript notes. It could proceed on the earlier judgment as the authoritative record of what it recorded; it was not hearing an appeal from the judge who had relied on that record.

5. The brief reasons were adequate. Under Rule 62(4), reasons for decisions other than judgments may be short and need only be proportionate to the significance of the issue. The parties knew the relevant background and the tribunal had sufficiently stated both its lack of power to remove the judgment and its conclusion on open justice.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: dismissed the claimant's appeal against the refusal of removal from the Register and anonymity.
• Employment Tribunal, London South: Regional Employment Judge Hildebrand refused the applications on 2 July 2018.