Mr Kevin Thorns v Michael Sutton trading as St Margaret’s Nursery — 2022

Mr Kevin Thorns worked for Michael Sutton trading as St Margaret’s Nursery from March 2020. The business was a small seasonal nursery with no written contracts, job descriptions, grievance procedure, or disciplinary procedure. Communication between Mr Sutton and senior staff was often by social media chat groups and private messages, and the tribunal found there was a general gap between the parties’ expectations about management communication and performance standards.

The dispute centred on a sequence of messages in March and April 2022. On 21 March 2022 Mr Sutton criticised the claimant’s handling of price changes and linked that criticism to concerns about wages and efficiency. The claimant said that exchange was unprofessional, and after a face-to-face meeting on 29 March 2022 Mr Sutton apologised and agreed to reflect on the messages. The tribunal accepted the claimant’s account of that meeting and found that he thought the matter had been resolved.

On 11 April 2022 Mr Sutton sent a further private message alleging that the claimant had been telling falsehoods, being dishonest, and telling lies about him to staff, and also criticising unresolved issues about pricing, hiring, the front tunnel, communication, and professionalism. The tribunal found there was no deliberate dishonesty or falsehood by the claimant, no reasonable basis for making those allegations, no proper investigation or disciplinary process, and no objective basis for adverse conclusions about his competence or conduct. It held that the 11 April 2022 message breached the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, was the primary cause of the claimant’s resignation, and was sufficiently serious to entitle him to treat the contract as at an end.

The tribunal concluded that the claimant resigned in response to that breach and was constructively dismissed. It also held that, viewed objectively, the sending of the 11 April 2022 message was likely to destroy trust and confidence and that there was no reasonable and proper cause for it. Remedy was not determined at this hearing; the judgment states that calculation of remedy, if not agreed, would be dealt with at a further hearing.