Miss Ingram (in person) For the v Respondent — 2020

Miss Ingram brought claims including constructive unfair dismissal, notice pay, unpaid holiday pay, a failure to provide a statement of employment particulars/changes, and earlier disability discrimination and redundancy payment claims. At the 6 February 2020 preliminary hearing the discrimination and redundancy claims were withdrawn and dismissed upon withdrawal. At the final hearing the parties agreed that she was owed £263.20 holiday pay, but that she had also been overpaid £737.50 at the end of employment, leaving a net overpayment of £474.30; on that basis she withdrew the holiday claim.

The constructive dismissal claim arose from the Respondent’s restructuring of Children’s Services after an Ofsted inspection, which led to the Claimant’s role being treated as a full-time post or a job-share. The tribunal found that the Respondent consulted with the Claimant, relied on a contractual flexibility clause, allowed time for childcare arrangements to be made, and was entitled to require a revised working pattern to ensure service cover across five days. It rejected the suggestion that Mr Jones had been preferred over her and found no repudiatory breach in the working-pattern changes.

The tribunal then considered the other alleged breaches relied on as a course of conduct: the response to concerns raised at the 22 November 2018 meeting, the handling of the 26 March 2019 grievance, the 30 January 2019 call while the Claimant was on sick leave, and the April 2019 absence-management warning. It found that the Respondent had reasonable and proper cause for its actions, that they were not calculated or likely to destroy trust and confidence, and that the absence warning was justified because the Claimant had remained off sick, had not engaged with offers of meetings, and had exceeded the policy trigger for formal action. The tribunal accepted that there had been an oversight in not organising mediation promptly, but found that this was not enough on its own to amount to a fundamental breach or a final straw. Applying the authorities it cited, including Western Excavating, Malik, Omilaju, Kaur and Braganza, it dismissed the constructive unfair dismissal claim.

The notice pay claim failed because the tribunal found there had been no breach of contract and the Claimant resigned without notice. The claim about the statement of employment particulars and changes also failed: the tribunal held that the Respondent had written to the Claimant on 26 September 2018 setting out the job title, grade, hours and start date, and later confirmed the working pattern on 20 November 2018. No monetary award was made by the tribunal.