Case No 8001603/2025Venue GlasgowHearing 4 & 5 December 2025
Between
Mr Matthew PeatClaimantValley Group LimitedRespondent
Before
Employment Judge CampbellMs R Nankya for respondentLitigation Executive for respondentDate 9 January 2026
JUDGMENT
[1]The complaint of automatic unfair dismissal under section 104 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 is unsuccessful and is dismissed;[2]The complaints of unlawful deduction from wages under sections 13 of the above Act is unsuccessful and is dismissed;[3]The complaint of unlawful payments under section 15 of the above Act is unsuccessful and is dismissed; and[4]The claim of breach of contract in respect of payment in lieu of notice is unsuccessful and is dismissed.
REASONS
Findings of fact
[1]The claimant is a former employee of the respondent company. He raised complaints in connection with the termination of his employment and for sums of money he believed to be due to him.[2]The hearing took place over two days. The claimant represented himself and the respondent was represented by Ms Nankya.[3]The claimant gave evidence and the respondent called four witnesses – Carlie McCartney (Project Co-ordinator), Scott Watson (Head of Renewables), David Liddell (Contract Delivery Manager) and Alan Fisher (also a Contract Delivery Manager). Each individual’s evidence in chief was given by way of written statements and witnesses were cross-examined in the usual way.[4]A joint bundle of documents had been prepared for the hearing. Numbers appearing in square brackets below correspond to the page numbers of the bundle. The claimant also provided a schedule of loss.[5]Parties were given the opportunity to deliver submissions after all of the evidence was heard, and did so by way of skeleton notes which they supplemented orally.[6]Any references to the ‘Act’ below are to the provisions of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Legal issues A list of issues had not been prepared, but at the outset of the hearing they were agreed to be as follows: 1. Did the respondent automatically unfairly dismiss the claimant for asserting a statutory right, contrary to section 104 of the Act? Therefore:a. Did the claimant assert a statutory right? If so in what way?b. If he did, was that the sole or principal reason for his dismissal? 2. Were unlawful deductions made from the claimant’s wages shortly after his dismissal contrary to section 13 of the Act, or alternatively was the claimant forced to make an unauthorised payment to the respondent contrary to section 15 of the Act, in any of the following ways: a. By the respondent not paying him for working time which he recorded and submitted on timesheets; b. By deducting money from his pay to cover the cost of repairing and valeting a works van; and/orc. By deducting money from his pay to cover the cost of replacing a portable vacuum cleaner. 3. Did the respondent breach the claimant’s contract by failing to give the required amount of notice of termination, or alternatively by failing to make an adequate payment in lieu of notice? The respondent paid the claimant in lieu of one week’s pay whereas the claimant alleged that he was entitled to two weeks. 4. Did the respondent breach the ACAS Code in relation to Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures in the process it followed when dismissing the claimant? If so, should there be an uplift in any compensatory award of up to 25% reflecting such breach? Findings of fact The following findings were made, based on the evidence provided and on the balance of probability. Findings are not made in relation to every matter raised in evidence, but rather only as necessary to decide the above legal issues.[1]The claimant was employed by the respondent company between 24 February and 17 June 2025 as a Heating Engineer. He was dismissed verbally on the latter date.[2]The claimant was given a written statement of employment terms which he signed on 11 February 2025 [100-111]. This is referred to below as his ‘contract’. It contained a number of provisions relevant to his legal complaints as discussed below.[3]The claimant reported to two Contract Delivery Managers, David Liddell and Alan Fisher. Their manager in turn was Scott Watson.[4]In his role the claimant carried out work at customers’ homes. He did not have a base office and each day he would leave his own home using a works van, carry out his scheduled jobs for the day at various locations, then travel back home.[5]The claimant was assigned jobs via an app named ‘Simpro’. He would input when he had started and completed each job. His van was equipped with a GPS tracking system which allowed the respondent to see where it was in real time.[6]The relevant contractual provisions relating to the claimant’s working time and pay were as follows:a. He was paid an hourly rate of £17.30;b. He was to work ab average of 40 hours per week;c. His normal working hours were 8.00am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday which incorporated a 30-minute unpaid break each day;d. Actual working hours were subject to change from week to week and could be varied by the respondent, and the claimant could be required to work additional hours as necessary for the proper performance of his duties; ande. Overtime and weekend work ‘must be agreed with [his] manager in advance of the work being undertaken’.[7]Additionally, any travel to the first job of the day and home from the last job of the day counted as working time for the purpose of the Working Time Regulations 1998 but was not paid. Any time spent in excess of an hour each way would be payable. This was not expressly stated in the contract, but was explained to the claimant when he commenced the role and is both the respondent’s standard approach and wider industry practice.[8]The claimant submitted weekly timesheets listing the working hours he was claiming for. He would be paid based on which of those hours were approved. He attempted to claim for overtime and expenses incurred for sundry supplies. He was told that overtime had to be authorised and could only be approved over and above 40 hours per week, and also that expenses should be reclaimed via a separate form. In his timesheets he would round up the time he spent on jobs by up to 15 minutes, compared with the timings shown by his van tracker or the Simpro app.[9]The claimant was subject to a probationary period as provided for in paragraph 3 of his contract. It read: ‘The first three months of your employment will be a probationary period. We may bring your employment to an end during your probationary period at any time with one day’s notice in your first month of employment and one week's notice thereafter, which we can at our discretion pay in lieu. We may, at our discretion extend the probationary period. During this probationary period, we will carefully monitor your performance and suitability for your role.’[10]During the claimant’s period of service his managers encountered a number of issues with his performance and conduct. Those principally included that:a. He arrived later to customer jobs than they considered he should have done;b. On occasion he logged start times of jobs in the app when the tracker in his van showed that it was still at his home;c. He finished work earlier on some days than they believed he should have done;d. There were times during the day when they believed he should have been working, but was not;e. He did not complete as many jobs as they believed he should have done. This was partly because of the above issues and also because they believed he would find reasons not to do jobs, such as that he was not experienced or qualified enough, that another member of the team was required, that he did not have the correct parts or supplies, or that the job would take too long;f. He was believed to be involved in another business, possibly along with his father, which he was devoting time to when he ought to have been working for the respondent;g. He was critical of the respondent and its other employees to customers; andh. That he was giving customers his personal contact details and attempting to solicit their custom for himself. This had been reported by customers directly to Mr Fisher and also Ms McCartney, a Project Co-ordinator who handled customer calls.[11]I concluded that all of the concerns listed in the paragraph above were genuinely held by the respondent, even though the claimant disputed them during his employment and in the hearing. This does not mean that every every instance of underperformance or poor conduct was definitively proven before the tribunal, but generally and substantially they were, consistent with corroboratory evidence from Mr Fisher, Mr Liddell and Ms McCartney. The respondent’s managers genuinely believed that these things occurred. The significance of this finding is particularly relevant when considering the respondent's reason or reasons for dismissal, discussed in more detail below.[12]Mr Fisher and Mr Liddell reported their increasing concerns about the claimant to Mr Watson, who advised that they should arrange a probationary review meeting to discuss them, hear what the claimant had to say in response, and then decide on his future as an employee. Attempts were made to do so from mid-May but it took until Monday 16 June 2025 before the meeting could proceed. That meant that it took place more than three months after his start date. The claimant was asked to attend the Friday before. He asked if the meeting was disciplinary in nature, and should he be accompanied at it. He was told that it was not that type of meeting, and that it was to discuss his performance. At the time this was a fair reflection of the claimant’s managers’ perception of what the meeting would deal with.[13]The probationary review meeting was conducted by Mr Fisher and Mr Liddell. Apart from the claimant, no-one else was present. The two managers prepared a summary of the meeting later that day which was produced [446- 447]. The note was accepted as a suitably accurate summary of the matters it covered. It did not cover everything that happened, such as a break which was agreed and how the meeting concluded as described below. The purpose of the meeting was stated to be ‘To discuss in full Matthew’s timekeeping, performance & productivity’.[14]The managers raised issues with the claimant’s timekeeping, accountability for his movements and apparent failure to work a full complement of 40 hours per week. They referred to records which showed that on certain dates the claimant had confirmed on Simpro that he had started his first job of the day while his van tracker showed the vehicle was still at his home. They took this as evidence of him trying to inflate the number of hours he was working and fraudulently claim pay for time not spent working.[15]Mr Liddell and Mr Fisher also discussed some occasions where the claimant would take longer than they believed required to commence a job, or would call for a colleague to accompany him to a job which they believed he should have been able to undertake alone. In short, they concluded that he had been looking for ways to avoid work.[16]The claimant denied the accusations being put to him and became animated, standing up and pacing around the room. His voice was raised and colleagues outside knocked on the door, asking those inside to reduce the noise level. The managers decided to call a ten-minute adjournment in the meeting to defuse tensions and allow the claimant time to consider any further comments he wished to make. They left the room during this time, and reached the conclusion that the claimant’s response to their concerns was a further issue in addition to the concerns themselves. This related both to his inability to explain his position convincingly and his heightened state of agitation. This caused them to lose trust in the claimant as an employee of the business. They resolved to terminate the claimant’s employment, which they confirmed to him upon resuming the meeting. They believed that they were doing so based on the claimant’s conduct and, to a lesser extent, his performance.[17]The claimant was asked to go home immediately. As he required to remove some of his own tools from his company van, Mr Liddell accompanied him home to allow him to do this and brought the van back to the respondent’s premises. Upon inspection it was found to be untidy inside and that a door handle was broken. The respondent paid a third party to valet and repair the van so that a colleague could begin using it.[18]Mr Watson confirmed the decision to dismiss the claimant in a letter dated the next day – 17 June 2025 [448]. The claimant was paid the equivalent of a week’s wages in lieu of notice. The respondent considered that he had not passed his probation and so was entitled to one week only.[19]Deductions were made from the claimant’s final pay as follows:a. For a hot water cylinder – £420;b. For a portable vacuum cleaner – £190; andc. For van valeting and repair costs - £60.[20]The claimant returned the hot water cylinder to the respondent’s supplier, which triggered a refund. The respondent paid that amount back to the claimant and accordingly he was no longer claiming for it. He continued to claim for the other two deductions. Discussion and decision Claim of automatic unfair dismissal – section 104 ERA[21]The claimant did not clearly explain in his evidence or closing submissions what statutory right he had asserted, or how. As clearly as could be identified from his evidence, he was relying on the statement of a perceived right to be paid for all time travelling between his home and his first and last jobs of the day. He clearly held this belief, as evidenced by the way he completed his timesheets and his evidence to the tribunal. However, there was no such right. There was only the potential right (which in any event the respondent conceded) to have such time count as working time. That in itself does not entail a right to pay for the time spent, either in terms of the Working Time Regulations 1998 or under the contract itself. Only if the claimant’s pay rate, factoring in this time, had fallen below the national minimum wage could a right to pay arise. The respondent had essentially put measures in place to avoid this happening by providing for flexibility in hours from day to day and agreeing to pay the excess above one hour for any initial or final daily journey.[22]Alternatively, referencing paragraph 13 in his statement, if the claimant believed that he asserted a statutory right to be accompanied in the meeting on 16 June 2025, no such right was engaged as the meeting had been convened with the purpose of discussing his performance and deciding whether he had passed probation. An employee has a right to be accompanied by a colleague or trade union representative at a disciplinary hearing by virtue of section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, but the hearing was not of that nature. Whilst true that the claimant was dismissed principally because of his conduct at the end of it, it was not convened as a disciplinary hearing with the possibility of a sanction such as a warning or the termination of his employment being in anyone’s mind. The decision to dismiss came as a result of the claimant’s conduct in the meeting itself.[23]In any event, the evidence clearly showed that the reason for the claimant’s dismissal was not wholly or principally any assertion of a right (whether based in statute or merely believed to exist) by the claimant. I accepted that the legal onus fell on the respondent to prove the reason or reasons for dismissal - Kuzel v Roche Products Ltd [2008] EWCA Civ 380. The two managers who chaired the meeting on 16 June 2025 dismissed the claimant for the principal reason of his conduct, with his performance being a lesser but still material factor. They concluded that he would not follow the correct procedures in relation to the amount of time he worked, when he would perform his services and how he would make claims for pay via timesheets. They reached the view that he was attempting to gain pay without performing the work required. They had lost trust in him and the working relationship had broken down.[24]In short, the claimant did not assert a valid statutory right at any relevant time, and the reason for his dismissal was unconnected. His claim of automatically unfair dismissal could not therefore succeed.[25]It followed that any claim for an uplift in compensation as a result of a failure to follow the ACAS Code could not succeed. That can only happen if the principal claim is successful. A free-standing complaint cannot be made. Claims for unlawful deductions under section 13 and unauthorised payments under section 15 ERA Overtime[26]The claimant sought a payment in respect of overtime work he said he had performed. He had included details of overtime claimed in some of his weekly timesheets. The respondent had not paid him overtime on those occasions. His managers had told him that it had not been authorised and/or it was not merited, principally because in the week in question he had not worked more than 40 hours. In circumstances where the claimant was claiming to have worked more than 40 hours per week, he was including travel time from his home to client premises and back to his home. He was not entitled to payment for the first hour of each such journey.[27]Additionally, the respondent challenged the accuracy of a number of the claimant’s own records of his working time in other respects. They took issue with him rounding up the time he was claiming for when working from the Simpro app data. They raised that he had on a number of occasions input that he was working on jobs when his van tracker suggested he was at home. They challenged him on the time he recorded for travel to, from and between jobs, some of which they thought was excessive. They also challenged him in relation to periods of non-productive time during workdays when he had said he was unable to work for reasons such as the need to have a colleague or other tradesman present, or lacking a relevant part.[28]The legal onus fell on the claimant to show that the amounts he claimed were all ‘properly payable’ to him under his contract – section 13(3) of the Act. Otherwise there cannot be an unauthorised deduction should the sum in question not be paid. He was unable to do so in this hearing whether by way of his evidence in chief or by way of documents he provided. He had not shown on the balance of probability:a. That the sums he was seeking were claimable under the respondent’s rules for overtime, because they were for excluded travelling time, because he had not worked sufficient hours in the week in question, or because he had not worked all of the hours he claimed; and/orb. That the sums were authorised in advance by a manager as the contract required, particularly the third paragraph of clause 8. Deductions made from pay – van repairs and valeting, equipment[29]By the time of the hearing the claimant complained about the deductions made from his final pay to cover the van valeting and repair costs, and nonreturn of a portable vacuum cleaner.[30]The claimant’s evidence was that he had not caused damage to the door handle of the van, and that the reason for the mess in the back was because a frame designed to store parts had collapsed. He therefore disputed that those issues were his responsibility and that the deductions were warranted. He also denied outright ever having received a portable vacuum cleaner upon starting in his role.[31]The respondent’s contrary evidence came from Messrs Watson, Liddell and Mr Fisher. Mr Watson said in evidence that he witnessed the vacuum being taken from another colleague’s van and given to the claimant. He said Mr Liddell and Mr Fisher were there at the time and also saw it. A record was made on the respondent’s system on the day. Mr Fisher also recalled the claimant being given the item, and Mr Liddell being present.[32]Mr Watson also said that the van had been checked when issued to the claimant and the door handle was not damaged at that time. Mr Liddell and Mr Fisher both agreed in their recollection.[33]On these evidential matters the claimant was effectively outnumbered by the respondent witnesses. I considered it more credible that their consistent recollection was the more accurate.[34]The respondent had a contractual right to make deductions from the claimant’s pay by virtue of clauses 15 and 19 of the contract. Read together, they permitted the respondent to make the deductions which it did. There is explicit reference in clause 19 to ‘loss or misplacement of customer/company property … plant or vehicles’ and clause 15 states ‘Failure to return company property in a reasonable or satisfactory condition will also result in an appropriate deduction being made from your final salary’.[35]Section 13(1)(b) of the Act allows an employer to make deductions when the worker has given written consent in advance. Such deductions are deemed authorised. The claimant provided such consent by signing the contract on its last page [111]. He confirmed that he understood and accepted all of its terms.[36]There was no evidence to suggest that the amount of each deduction was excessive. I therefore found that they were authorised. Breach of contract – notice pay[37]The parties’ positions on how much notice the claimant was contractually entitled to receive hinged on whether he had passed probation. At the point when he had, his entitlement to notice (and by extension pay in lieu) increased from one week to two, as set out in clause 13 of the contract [103]. The contract provided that the first three months of the claimant’s service were a probationary period. It did not contain any terms to the effect that probation would only be deemed passed after a meeting to review the claimant’s performance, or when the respondent otherwise positively confirmed that to be the case.[38]The claimant therefore considered that he had passed probation as soon as he had reached three months of service, which occurred on 24 May 2025. The respondent on the other hand, via the evidence of Messrs Liddell, Fisher and Watson, understood based on the practice they normally followed that the respondent had to tell the claimant that he had passed probation, which would normally occur at or shortly following a probation review meeting. If that meeting fell after the three-month anniversary then the probation period would continue to run in the meantime.[39]I took the view that the claimant’s interpretation of the contract was the correct one. That document was created by the respondent and it chose how to express the terms it wished to apply to probation. The option was there to specify any processes or conditions which would apply to the passing of probation, but there were none. The relevant clause (clause 3) simply says that the first three months of employment will be a probationary period, and that it may be extended at the respondent’s discretion. The respondent did not indicate to the claimant that it was exercising that right of extension, and so by default the period ended after three months. Whatever the claimant’s managers believed to be conditions upon that did not make their way into the contract, whether as express wording, or something agreed verbally or by implication to run alongside it. I acknowledge that in normal circumstances the respondent would hold a meeting with a probationary employee within the initial three-month period, and then notify them whether they had passed, would have probation extended, or be dismissed. But delaying doing those things until after the three-month point did not prevent the initial probationary period being completed. This is how the contract reads.[40]The claimant’s contractual entitlement to notice was therefore two weeks in line with clause 13 of the contract. In support of this interpretation of the contract I noted that clause 13 stated that the entitlement would increase to that amount ‘on completion of probationary period’ (emphasis added). This suggests that the only criterion was the passing of time.[41]One further relevant aspect of the situation requires to be dealt with, however. The claimant was dismissed by reason of his conduct. The question therefore arose whether the claimant had materially breached the contract by his repudiatory conduct to the extent that the respondent was released from the obligation to pay him in respect of notice altogether. This will be a question of degree, in other words whether the claimant’s conduct was serious enough to amount to a repudiatory breach as opposed to a more minor one. Generally, repudiatory conduct must be wilful and show that the employee has disregarded the essential conditions of their contract or undermined the necessary trust and confidence on which the relationship is founded. Deliberate dishonesty will normally fall into this category - Adesokan v Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd [2017] EWCA Civ 22, which is an English authority although still of practical guidance.[42]Considering the contemporaneous note of the meeting on 16 June 2025 [446- 447] and the evidence of the claimant’s two managers, the best evidence was that the claimant was deemed guilty of gross misconduct and dismissed principally for that reason. Although there had been discussion initially about his performance also, the conclusion reached by the end of the meeting, as summarised in the ‘Meeting outcome’ box was that the claimant had been at home but claiming to be working on-site, and therefore was falsifying his timesheets and attempting to increase his wages fraudulently. That was deemed to be gross misconduct causing the claimant to be dismissed with immediate effect.[43]I had to consider not only whether the respondent concluded that the claimant had committed gross misconduct, but whether the evidence itself showed that he had. On the balance of probability this is my finding. The oral evidence of Mr Liddell and Mr Fisher was that he had. They were of that view clearly in their meeting with the claimant. They had reliable documentary evidence in the form of van tracker records and app data, compared against the claimant’s timesheets. Earlier examples of such issues being drawn to the claimant’s attention were produced and discussed in evidence, such as Mr Liddell’s emails to the claimant on 11 April 2025 [438] and 2 June 2025 [442]. Further similar conversations took place which were not similarly documented. The managers discussed numerous examples in the meeting. The claimant’s response was unconvincing. He suggested the records were inaccurate, for example because the app could be affected by signal issues.[44]It follows therefore that as a result of the claimant’s repudiatory conduct the respondent was released from the obligation to give any notice of termination to the claimant at all, or to make any payment in lieu. The respondent paid him for a week as a goodwill gesture. He is not legally entitled to anything further.
Conclusions
[45]The claimant has been unable to provide sufficient relevant and persuasive evidence to meet the onus of proof whenever it fell upon him in each of his complaints. The evidence available is more consistent with the respondent’s position in each aspect. The complaints cannot therefore succeed that the claim must be dismissed.
Introduction
[1]By application dated 23 January 2026 (the ‘application’) the claimant applied for reconsideration of the tribunal’s judgment issued to parties on 9 January 2026. That judgment refused his complaints of unfair dismissal, unlawful deductions from wages, unlawful payments and breach of contract.[2]Upon initial consideration of the application, I did not refuse it and sought the respondent’s response to it, which was provided on 11 February 2026 (the ‘response’). The response stated that the application disclosed no reasonable prospect of the judgment being varied or revoked and should be refused. It added that the application amounted to an attempt to reargue the facts of the claim, credibility assessments made by the tribunal and its permitted interpretation of relevant contractual terms.[3]The parties’ views were sought on whether a hearing was required to decide the application. Neither party requested one. I did not myself see a need for there to be a hearing. The parties had adequately set out their position in their written documents.
Relevant law
[4]The mechanism for reconsideration of tribunal judgments is contained in Part 12, rules 68 to 71 of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024. Whether a party applies for reconsideration or a tribunal decides itself to do so, a judgment can only be reconsidered if ‘it is necessary in the interests of justice to do so.’ The result of reconsideration may be that the judgment is confirmed, varied or revoked.[5]In conducting reconsideration, a tribunal should consider the interests of both parties and also the public interest in finality of litigation (in relation to the last of those, Ebury Partners Ltd v Acton Davis [2023] EAT 40 is relevant). A party should not be permitted to use the reconsideration process to reargue their case a second time around, or in other words to gain a ‘second bite of the cherry’.[6]A number of authorities provide clarification and guidance as to when a judgment should be varied or revoked upon reconsideration and when it should not. A principle which emerges is that it is generally appropriate to vary or revoke a previous judgment when there has been a procedural misstep which appears to have had a material influence on the outcome, but not when the parties had a fair opportunity to present their cases and no procedural issues or errors arose – Ebury Partners Ltd as above, Trimble v Supertravel Ltd [1982] ICR 440, Ministry of Justice v Burton and another [2016] EWCA Civ 714. In those circumstances, the correct process is to submit an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (‘EAT’). The grounds of the application[7]The claimant’s application contains nine numbered grounds.[8]The first ground is a submission that I made an error by failing to consider a material term of his written contract of employment. The term was a piece of wording which read ‘As a safeguard your hourly rate will not drop below £17.30.’ That figure was his normal hourly rate of pay. However, the quoted wording when read in context could be seen to be dealing specifically with situations where the respondent changed its normal pricing structure for client jobs. It appeared to be designed to ensure that, if a discount was given to the client on such occasions, the claimant would still be paid in the usual way.[9]The term was not relied upon by the client before the tribunal in the way that he now appears to be referring to it in the application. It had no bearing on his circumstances in the claim, which were more concerned with whether travel and other non-core working time should be paid. The claimant appears to now argue that this term essentially prevented any time being treated as working time unless it was also paid at his full rate, but that is not how the term is properly to be interpreted.[10]The evidence which was before the tribunal was considered. It pointed to there being an industry-wide practice of not paying for travel time to the first job of the day and from the last, that the respondent operated this practice, and that it was explained to the claimant when he took up his role.[11]The second ground was that the claimant had been mischaracterised as dishonest in his time recording and claims for overtime.[12]This finding was a credibility assessment which the tribunal was entitled to make based on documentary evidence before it and the oral evidence of the respondent’s witnesses. The application repeats the claimant’s position in the hearing but does not disclose any error made in the evaluation of the evidence at the time.[13]I stressed in the judgment – paragraphs 8, 10 and 11 of the findings of fact – that the claimant did various things which had the effect of either reducing the work he carried out or increasing the pay he would receive for it. Following on from that I explained that although those were accepted as being established on the evidence, what really mattered in the particular legal complaint the claimant was making was that the respondent itself genuinely believed those things were taking place.[14]The third ground was that I had retrospectively applied my own assessment of why the claimant had been dismissed by two managers, finding that their reason was gross misconduct and/or a repudiatory breach of contract.[15]The claimant referred to the fact that no formal misconduct procedure was followed, such as an invitation to a disciplinary hearing, a written note of the allegations to answer or any reference to misconduct in his dismissal letter.[16]The claimant is correct in his recall of those pieces of evidence, but that was not all of the relevant evidence. The two managers, whom he accepted had between them agreed to dismiss him, gave consistent evidence that the reason why they decided in the meeting to take that step. This was because of his belligerence in the meeting when they attempted to discuss performance and conduct concerns.[17]A tribunal’s role is to assess all of the relevant evidence before it on the question of what the sole or principal reason for a claimant’s dismissal is. What any particular respondent witness (or claimant) thought was the reason is relevant but not determinative. Similarly, what language was used in a letter confirming dismissal is relevant but not be decisive. The fact that the meeting was not set up as a disciplinary hearing was clearly debated in the hearing and covered in the judgment – it was initially arranged as a probationary review meeting and only because of how the claimant acted during it was a decision to dismiss quickly taken.[18]The fourth ground was that I had relied on material not properly put to the claimant for comment, or which was not adequately supported by other documents.[19]This point is an attempt to re-hear his case. The only material relied upon by the tribunal was that which was provided in documentary form and spoken to by a witness – including the claimant – or free-standing oral evidence. The claimant clearly appeared to understand the respondent’s case and had adequate opportunity to respond to it.[20]To repeat a point above, the tribunal did not have to definitively find that manipulation of the time recording or van tracker systems was proven against the claimant, only that the respondent genuinely held that belief. A line-by-line assessment of the documents was not necessary.[21]The fifth ground was that I preferred evidence of three respondent witnesses because they outnumbered the claimant, even though that evidence was not consistent.[22]The evidential issue in question was whether the claimant had received a particular piece of equipment on joining, which he had later been accused of not returning, triggering a deduction from his final pay.[23]I found that there was enough consistency in the recollections of the three witnesses to make it more probable that the claimant had been given the item as the respondent claimed. This did not require each person to have an identical recollection in every way. The balance of probability does not require that. I evaluated the evidence in a way which I was entitled to do, having heard each person, including the claimant, given their evidence on the point.[24]The sixth ground was that I did not take into account evidence contained in messages which the claimant said he had provided to the respondent before the hearing, but had not been added to the hearing bundle.[25]The claimant did not raise the existence of those messages or their absence from the bundle in the hearing. The tribunal had no knowledge of them. He did not provide them with the application.[26]In the hearing he was given adequate opportunity to set out his case, including time to prepare and then present closing submissions.[27]A tribunal cannot be expected to go seeking evidence beyond what the parties bring to the hearing, where it has no knowledge that evidence exists. The claimant had an opportunity to raise this matter but it is now too late to do so. The tribunal has not made a procedural slip or error.[28]The seventh ground of the application was that the respondent did not provide the claimant with certain job reports which he says would have supported his case.[29]This ground falls into the same territory as his sixth ground. Reconsideration is not the process to revisit procedural matters when the party claiming to have been put to a disadvantage had adequate opportunity in the lead up to the hearing, or even during it, to raise the issue but did not. Fundamentally it is for each party to prepare their case before a hearing, which may involve asking the tribunal to grant an order that another party do something, but not to revisit decisions not made in the wake of an adverse judgment.[30]The claimant’s eighth ground is that in his performance review meeting his conduct was viewed by the respondent as ‘irate/shouting/aggressive’ and requiring other staff to intervene. This related closely to the third ground of the application. He made the point that this was not reflected in the note of that meeting prepared by the managers who conducted it.[31]Whilst that is correct as far as it goes, each manager gave evidence on oath which was detailed and consistent about how the claimant behaved in the meeting. I was entitled to consider that evidence reliable. The fact that their verbal accounts were not fully reflected in the black and white summary which followed did not undermine that. In particular, there was no need to go into the detail of the claimant’s behaviour when the purpose of the note was to capture that the claimant had not passed probation.[32]The ninth ground was that the respondent provided no documents to support its position that it had concerns with the claimant’s performance and/or conduct from early or mid-May 2025.[33]He goes on to say that had gross misconduct been suspected since mid-May, a five-week delay was implausible. This appears to misunderstand the respondent’s case, or at least as the tribunal viewed it.[34]Put short, the evidence was found to have shown that the respondent began to have concerns primarily around the claimant’s performance which only later led to more serious issues of conduct (primarily honesty and integrity) emerging. By that time the managers concerned were considering the scheduling of a probation review meeting in the normal way. It was not remarkable for them to wish to deal with all matters together in that meeting. Even then, it was the claimant’s conduct in the meeting itself which proved to be the determining factor in the decision to dismiss him. Nothing in that undermined the respondent’s credibility.
Conclusion
[35]To reiterate, the reconsideration process is designed to allow the tribunal to recognise – by itself or as pointed out by one of the parties – where it has made an error and correct it. Those errors tend to be practical or procedural rather than more fundamental legal errors which have always been capable of addressing by an appeal to a higher tribunal.[36]For the above reasons, on reconsideration of my decision in light of the parties’ submissions I see no relevant and material errors and elect to confirm it. I remain of the view that the claimant did not discharge the necessary burden of proof on him in his legal complaints and that the dismissal of his claim should stand.