Mr. I Griffiths v Calor Gas Limited — 2024

Mr I Griffiths brought a claim of constructive unfair dismissal against Calor Gas Limited. The tribunal heard evidence over 10 and 11 April 2024 and reserved judgment. It found that the claimant had been employed as a home-based Specifier Consultant since 2018, later moving with effect from 19 September 2022 into the Partnership Team with a title change to Partnership Specifier Consultant. The tribunal accepted that there was no material change to his contractual role, salary or grade, although there were some practical differences in how the work was carried out and no consultation took place before the team move was notified.

The tribunal found that when Mr Young became the claimant’s line manager in January 2023, he did not set specific targets or maintain frequent contact, but this was against the background of the claimant having presented his own short-term plan on 10 January 2023 and Mr Young believing he was following it. The claimant did not raise concerns to HR or chase up his unanswered email of 19 January 2023. The tribunal also found that no individual home-worker or lone-worker risk assessment had been carried out, but concluded that this omission was not a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence and was not in the claimant’s mind when he resigned.

The tribunal further found that RH’s separate concerns were raised confidentially and were not copied to the claimant, so the respondent’s failure to contact him about those matters was not a breach. As to the 6 March 2023 cylinder recovery plan, the tribunal accepted that 167 customers were allocated to the claimant and that this was the largest number of Rx customers assigned to anyone, but it found that the request was a legitimate management instruction, the 31 March date was not a hard deadline, and additional support could be available. Looking at the matters individually and cumulatively, the tribunal held that the respondent had not conducted itself in a manner calculated or likely to destroy or seriously damage mutual trust and confidence, so the constructive dismissal claim failed and was dismissed. No remedy was awarded.