MR A J BENNETT v STAFFORDSHIRE MAGISTRATES COURTS' COMMITTEE [2001] UKEAT 883_00_0102

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

BAILII case number: [2001] UKEAT 883_00_0102

Case No Appeal No. EAT/883/00

Venue 58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

Between

MR A J BENNETTAPPELLANT

STAFFORDSHIRE MAGISTRATES COURTS' COMMITTEERESPONDENT

Before

His Honour Judge Collins

Date 1 February 2001

[1]APPEARANCES For the Appellant HENRIETTA HILL (Of Counsel) Instructed by HMB Law Solicitors Jubilee Chambers 81-83 The Boulevard Stoke on Trent ST6 6BD JUDGE COLLINS This is the preliminary hearing of an appeal against the decision of an Employment Tribunal sitting at Shrewsbury whose extended reasons were promulgated on 26 May 2000. By their decision the Tribunal held that the Appellant had not been dismissed from his position as a magistrates court clerk with the Respondent Magistrates Courts' Committee and also held that there had been no unlawful deduction from his salary in relation to the costs of training. There is an appeal against the finding in relation to dismissal.

[2]Mr Bennett had been employed as a magistrates court clerk from January 1989 until 31 August 1989. He had given one month's notice of his intention to leave on 30 July. The background, as the Tribunal very clearly held, was what they described as a long standing and deep rooted dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Magistrates Courts' Committee was being managed and with those who were in immediate authority over him.

[3]The Appellant had been given the responsibility of looking into the feasibility of a new building and it is clear from the correspondence which we have read that he became passionately and personally committed to this project. When it did not develop in the way in which he had hoped his personal frustration was evident and he took the opportunity to express his frustration at the Magistrates bench meeting. There were two bench meetings a year and it seems to have been the practice for the Magistrates to allow members of the court staff to attend and to address the meeting. Apparently the Appellant had expressed his views quite strongly at at least one meeting and had been complimented by some magistrates for doing so.

[4]His immediate superiors took a rather different view of his attitude and the way in which he was getting himself involved. He received an instruction that he was not to attend bench meetings. He took the view that that was an unlawful instruction in that it encroached upon his right of freedom of speech as enshrined in

article 10 of the European Convention

of Human Rights, although that had not come into force in this country at the time that his complaint was made. He instituted a grievance procedure.

[5]The Tribunal found that the grievance procedure was carried out in a very unsatisfactory way and that there was a breach of contract in the way that the procedure was carried out, although as Miss Hill rightly points out they do not particularise with any degree of clarity the particular contractual term of which the Respondents were in breach. The Tribunal held that the breach was a fundamental one but that it was not the reason for the Appellant's resignation. Miss Hill on behalf of the Appellant makes a number of criticisms of the Tribunal's decision. She asserts that they should have proceeded by way of proper analysis of the nature of the contractual term which was being breached. They should have given consideration to the question of whether or not the contractual breach in relation to the grievance procedure was the combination of a process commencing with the unlawful instruction and should have considered the whole history in relation to those matters justified the Appellant in taking the view that the employers had evinced an intention to be longer bound by their contract. She also criticises the Tribunal's findings that the breach was not a fundamental one.

[6]We begin by concentrating on that part of the Tribunal's judgment where they held that the breach of contract was not the cause of the Appellant leaving. It is clearly established that on 15 July 1999, two weeks before he sent his letter of resignation, the Appellant had accepted a job with a local firm of solicitors. He delayed his letter of resignation until the position of a partner with that firm of solicitors had been clarified. He left to join those solicitors, where we are told he is still employed. The Tribunal drew attention to that in the context of a grievance meeting on 1 July and a failure by the Respondents to fulfil their contractual obligation to supply a written decision within seven days.

[7]Both parties understood that the matters would be resolved at a meeting of the Magistrates Courts' Committee. However, nothing was done. The Tribunal addressed itself in those circumstances to whether what had happened in relation to the instruction and the grievance procedure was the reason for the Appellant leaving. They deal with it in this way in paragraph 4 of their reasons:

"The Applicant did not resign in response to the breaches of which he now complains. The Applicant's letter of resignation extends to 4½ closely typed pages but it is only at the foot of the penultimate page that the Applicant begins to make any complaint relating to Mr Benson and his instructions to the Applicant. The Applicant does not mention his complaint about the conduct of the grievance procedure at all. In the majority of his letter the Applicant gives vent to his frustration and dissatisfaction at the management of the Respondent."

And then they go on:

"The only relevance to us of those matters is that they clearly show the real reason for the Applicant's decision to resign was far more deep-rooted than his complaint about the grievance procedure or even about the instruction given to him by Mr Benson."

They then continue to recite the alternative employment which I have already mentioned. And then in paragraph 5 they say:

"We concluded that the applicant had long-standing and deep-rooted dissatisfactions with the manner in which the Respondent was being managed and with those who were in immediate authority over him. Those dissatisfactions long pre-dated his invoking of the grievance procedure in May 1999. They, and not the conduct of his grievance procedure, were the real operative reasons for his decision to seek employment elsewhere and ultimately to resign."

[8]It seems to us, whatever the substance of Miss Hill's criticisms of the rest of the Employment Tribunal's decision, about which we do not find it necessary to make a ruling, the Tribunal were perfectly entitled on the evidence to come to the conclusion they did about the real operative or effective reasons for the Appellant's resignation.

[9]They held and there were facts on which they were entitled to come to that view, that he did not resign because of either the original instruction or the way in which the grievance proceedings was handled, but for the other long standing matters related to his dissatisfaction which were never alleged to amount to any breach of contract.

[10]There is no point of law in our judgment which arises in relation to that issue which is sufficient to determine the appeal. Accordingly in our judgment there is no arguable point of law which is capable of affecting the result of the case and we dismiss the appeal.