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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Renel (t/a Keighley Preparatory School) v Whitley & Anor [1997] UKEAT 427_97_1407 (14 July 1997) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1997/427_97_1407.html Cite as: [1997] UKEAT 427_97_1407

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MR D BROWN (of Counsel) ELAAS


 


MR JUSTICE MORISON (PRESIDENT): The purpose of this hearing is to determine whether there is an arguable point of law raised in a Notice of Appeal which is dated 13th March 1997 and received by us on 17th March 1997. If there is an arguable point of law, then this appeal will go forward for a full hearing. If there is not, we shall dismiss it at this stage.

In the Notice of Appeal it says that the appellant appeals from the decision of the Industrial Tribunal held at Leeds on 14th January 1997. The Industrial Tribunal on 14th January 1997 considered complaints brought by two former teachers at Keighley Preparatory School who had ceased to be employed at the school. They were complaining that they were entitled to a redundancy payment and to damages for breach of their contracts of employment.

On 14th January 1997 the Industrial Tribunal adjudicated on their complaints. The School was represented by Mr John Renel who is the proprietor of the School. The decision of the Industrial Tribunal was sent to the parties on 3rd February 1997 and is expressed to be in summary form. The provisions of our Rules and Practice Direction are that we will not in general terms entertain appeals against decisions which are expressed in summary form for the obvious reason that it is not the Industrial Tribunal's full explanation of the reasoning which has led them to come to the conclusions which they have arrived. It is therefore not possible fairly to say of any decision in summary form that the tribunal have erred in law in any particular respect.

Mr Renel did two things. He applied to the Industrial Tribunal for them to review their decision. That matter came on for hearing some time between 14th February 1997 and 3rd March 1997. On 5th March 1997 he applied to the Industrial Tribunal for full reasons for the decision which was first given by the tribunal. That application for full reasons was dismissed by the Industrial Tribunal on the grounds that it was made out of time, and there has been no appeal from their refusal to extend time for such an application.

Accordingly we are faced with an appeal against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal expressed in summary form. Mr Brown says that the letter of appeal was capable also of constituting an appeal against the decision of the Industrial Tribunal which was expressed in extended reasons not to review their earlier decision.

By that decision which was sent to the parties on 3rd March 1997, the Industrial Tribunal rejected Mr Renel's application for a review. The application for a review was essentially related to evidence which Mr Renel said would have affected the Industrial Tribunal's decision and that the interests of justice required a review because he did not have a proper opportunity to present his case on the first occasion. That application was considered. It was the decision of the Chairman of the tribunal firstly, that Mr Renel was given every opportunity to put forward his case, cross-examine the applicants and sum up his case at the end of the hearing; secondly, that all the matters which were referred to in the letter of 14th February 1997 were matters which could have been put to the hearing on 14th January 1997; and accordingly the application for a review would be refused.

We deal with the appeal on the assumption that Mr Brown is correct, although we have misgivings about it, that the letter of appeal was apt to be an appeal against both the decision on 14th January 1997 and the decision not to review the original decision.

So far as the first matter is concerned, it is apparent for us that it would be quite inappropriate in this case to proceed to have an appeal against a decision of an Industrial Tribunal which is contained in summary reason form only. There is nothing on the face of this document to indicate that the Industrial Tribunal have in any way erred in law. But there is nothing to indicate how they have resolved the various disputes which there were between the parties as to how the applicants' entitlements should be calculated. We are told, and accept, that there had been correspondence passing between the parties prior to the date of this hearing in which certain offers had been made by the School to these two applicants.

Essentially the difference between the way the tribunal calculated their entitlements and the way that the letter made the offer, is to be found in the tribunal's decision that the applicants were entitled to one terms' notice amounting to four months' notice: by way of custom and practice in the Independent Schools sector. Mr Renel was offering to pay what would be called the statutory minimum period of notice which is based on the number of years of service that they had had in the School. In terms of the calculation of the redundancy payment, there was an attempt by Mr Renel to calculate their full entitlement and I think that it is merely a matter of mathematical difference that the figures arrived at by the tribunal in one case at any rate is only marginally different from that which was contained in the letter, and was exactly the same in the other case.

It seems to us that the letters which Mr Renel places so much reliance on, did not have any binding effect. It is not possible to contract out of paying redundancy payments without certain statutory steps being taken. Accordingly, it was unlikely, in any event, that this correspondence was going to be of assistance to the Industrial Tribunal. What they had to do was to identify and construe the contracts of employment of these two applicants. Asking the parties what they thought the contract meant was not likely to be of assistance to them in carrying out the task of construction, since that task requires the Court or tribunal to apply an objective test to determine the intention of the parties having regard to the words used and the surrounding circumstances.

In those circumstances we are satisfied that it would be inappropriate to allow an appeal against the summary decision of the Industrial Tribunal to proceed. We do not normally accept such appeals and this is not such a case where we should.

In relation to the application for a review, it seems to us inevitable that once the tribunal had concluded that Mr Renel had an opportunity to present whatever case he wanted at the earlier hearing, then the application for a review was bound to fail, because there was no new material which was not reasonably available to him and which could not have been put before the tribunal at the correct time. Accordingly, in our judgment there is no merit whatever in the appeal against the decision not to grant a review; even if, which we are doubtful, the letter of appeal could amount to such a Notice of Appeal.

In those circumstances, there is no point of law fit for hearing before a full body of the Employment Appeal Tribunal and we therefore dismiss the appeal in this case.