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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Winstanley v Sermatech Repair Services Ltd & Anor [1998] UKEAT 1309_98_1412 (14 December 1998) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1998/1309_98_1412.html Cite as: [1998] UKEAT 1309_98_1412

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MS S. DREW (of Counsel) Nelsons Pennine House 8 Stamford Street Nottingham NG1 7BQ


 


HIS HONOUR JUDGE J. ALTMAN: This matter comes before us by way of preliminary hearing of an appeal from the decision of the Employment Tribunal sitting in Nottingham on 18 June 1998. The decision was promulgated in extended form on 28 August 1998. Our concern is to determine whether there is an arguable point of law such as to justify this appeal proceeding to be considered in full by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

We have had before us the decision of the Employment Tribunal, the Notice of Appeal with amendments and the skeleton argument in support of the appeal. We have also had an opportunity of reading the witness statement of the Applicant, the very full witness statement, which we are told was handed to the Chairman and he was asked to read it. We have also had before us a short version of the witness statement of the Applicant, which we are told constituted the evidence before the Tribunal in that the Applicant read it out. We have also been told that there was no other oral evidence but submissions were made.

The totality of the application by the Applicant against both Respondents was dismissed by the Chairman at the hearing on 18 June. That is quite clear from the face of the decision. There was no application for a review. We are told that it was the belief of the Applicant that later incidents were left outstanding for proceedings to continue. On the face of it, that is inconsistent with the findings of the Tribunal and the framework of extended reasons which are all, on the face of it, comprehensive, with no provision for a future hearing. Furthermore, it is not clear from paragraph 6 of the extended reasons whether the Applicant was in fact restricting the case to 27 October because it is clear that, from both her statements, the Applicant was purporting to make allegations of a continuing nature which would have gone beyond that date. In the end, it has not been possible on this preliminary hearing for us to determine what actually transpired before the Tribunal and, furthermore, it is not possible from an examination of the extended reasons as they stand, for us to be clear in our minds of the factual basis at this stage, of the judgments of the learned Chairman.

We have decided that this matter does require a full hearing so that the Employment Appeal Tribunal can have before it information from both parties as to what transpired before the Employment Tribunal. We are going to ask for the assistance of the learned Chairman in this connection by providing the Employment Appeal Tribunal with a note of any oral evidence that was given in case those before us today have forgotten some oral evidence that was in fact given together with copies of the statements that were considered by the Chairman in reaching his decision. We will also ask if it is possible for notes of any submissions or arguments that were addressed to him and which he recorded. That is very much something that the Chairman will have done for his own personal assistance. They may be very brief or they may be very long. But if there are such notes, they may assist in resolving the issues to which we have referred and in view of the matters which have arisen, it may be that the Applicant will wish to amend the Notice of Appeal to deal with the issues as to whether matters were comprehensively dealt with or not.

To that extent, we direct that the parties prepare a joint list of the issues to be determined by the Employment Appeal Tribunal. That document together with final skeleton arguments from both parties, is to be submitted to the Employment Appeal Tribunal not less than 14 days before the full hearing. This matter is to be listed for one day in Category B.