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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Medway Community Living Services Ltd v. Poole [1999] UKEAT 59_99_0403 (4 March 1999) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1999/59_99_0403.html Cite as: [1999] UKEAT 59_99_0403, [1999] UKEAT 59_99_403

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR D PANESAR (of Counsel) Messrs Argles & Court Solicitors 12 Mill Street Maidstone Kent ME15 6UX


 


MR JUSTICE HOLLAND: This matter stems from a complaint of unfair dismissal made by an IT1 dated 25 June 1998.

The events giving rise to the dismissal are substantially that which occurred on Friday 27 March 1998 in a shop. At the time in the shop there was the Applicant, then a care worker, together with a young man, who was mentally handicapped, and what was said to have occurred was a slapping of the young man by the Applicant.

On that basis a disciplinary procedure was set in motion which led to a decision to dismiss. It was that decision which was said by the Applicant to be unfair by reference to section 98 (4). It was that matter which was to engage the attention of this Tribunal. In the event the Tribunal ruled that the dismissal was unfair. An appeal is mounted against that.

It comes before us today by way of a preliminary hearing, our concern being as to whether the matter should go forward for an inter-partes hearing.

We have had the advantage of a skeleton argument and submissions by Mr Deshpal Panesar and in the result we are entirely satisfied that the matter should go forward for an inter-partes hearing. Our concern stems initially from paragraphs 17 and 18 of the Extended Reasons in which the Tribunal made its ruling, purportedly by reference to section 98 (4). In that, in exercising its discretion, it referred to certain factors. What it did not do was to weigh in the balance the facts as to what happened in the shop. That is not surprising because there is no finding as to those facts. This, in its turn, reflects the fact that the concern that the Tribunal almost solely focussed upon the conduct of the disciplinary procedure and it failed on the face of it, to discern what the factual basis was, first for the decision to dismiss and secondly, for its own exercise of the discretion afforded to it by section 98.

For that and for other reasons that are raised in the notice of appeal and the skeleton argument, we give leave for the matter to proceed to an inter-partes hearing at which the whole circumstances can be looked at again. To facilitate that we direct that the notes of the Chairman be copied and made available to this Tribunal and to the parties. We further direct listing Category 'C'; duration, half a day.