Mrs S Jones v Eco Montessori CIC — 2021

Mrs S Jones worked as a Nursery Manager at the respondent's Montessori pre-school nursery near Salisbury. By a claim form dated 11 August 2021 she brought complaints of constructive unfair dismissal based on public interest disclosures and unpaid holiday pay, and applied for interim relief. The hearing before Employment Judge Livesey was confined to the interim relief application.

The claimant said she made written disclosures to management on 6 and 8 April 2021 about the wellbeing of children, alleged non-adherence to guidance, and the conduct of another employee. She also said she contacted Ofsted and the local authority designated officer. The respondent accepted that the first email of 6 April was a protected qualifying disclosure, but not the later matters relied on. The tribunal also recorded that the claimant had raised a grievance, that it was dismissed apart from one technical point about the employee handbook, and that she resigned on 1 August 2021 with effect from 27 August 2021 citing the handling of the grievance.

Applying s.128 and s.129 ERA 1996 and the "pretty good chance" test from Taplin, Dandpat, London City Airport v Chacko and Sarfraz, the tribunal was not satisfied that the claimant had a pretty good chance of establishing that the principal reason for dismissal was her disclosures. It accepted that some of the alleged treatment after the disclosures was persuasive, but found the causal link weaker because the grievance had been investigated by an external HR organisation and the concerns about the employee identified as LH had been addressed by suspension, investigation and sanction. The tribunal said that not receiving the outcome the claimant wanted on the grievance was not necessarily a fundamental breach of contract, and it dismissed the interim relief application. It expressly noted that this decision did not mean the claimant would fail at the final hearing.