Mr Brownhill in person For the v Respondent — 2023

The claimant, Mr Keith Brownhill, resigned on 21 July 2021 after a Group Board meeting on 20 July 2021 and left employment at the end of that month. He alleged constructive unfair dismissal based on a series of matters said to breach the implied term of mutual trust and confidence, and also claimed wrongful dismissal in relation to notice. The tribunal confined the case to the specific matters identified in the claimant’s list of alleged breaches and held that the earlier 2020 demotion events were only background because he had remained in employment after his first resignation in August 2020.

The tribunal rejected the claimant’s case that he had been excluded without justification from early 2021 discussions about Mr Rupert Martin’s possible IPO. It found that those early conversations were confidential, that Mr Martin was entitled to decide when to involve others, and that there was no customary practice giving the claimant a right to attend. The tribunal also found no breach in relation to the claimant’s complaint about the July 2021 VAT loss on exports to France: the agenda item was legitimate, the Board was entitled to question him, and although some criticism about the French registration process and paperwork was misplaced, it was not serious enough to destroy trust and confidence.

The same conclusion was reached on the TARF foreign exchange contracts. The tribunal found that the Board had not previously understood the scale and risk profile of the contracts, that the claimant had entered into them without referring the use or scale of TARFs to the Board, and that the contracts exposed the company to very substantial risk relative to its likely dollar needs. The July 2021 discussion was described as heated, but the tribunal found that Mr Martin did not shout at the claimant and that the Board was entitled to hold him to account for the contracts and the losses.

The tribunal also rejected the claimant’s complaints about the HR discussion concerning employee E, the social-media advertising of vacancies by Mr Martin’s PA, the Directors’ Dinner on 9 July 2021, the later demand for repayment arising from the TARF losses, the report to ICAEW, and the additional matters concerning the claimant’s age, future plans, and standing desks. In each case the tribunal found either that the matter was trivial, not objectively aimed at the claimant, not proved as alleged, or that the respondent had reasonable and proper cause for what it did. The tribunal concluded that none of the incidents individually amounted to a breach of the implied term, and that taken together they still did not amount to a repudiatory breach.

Because there was no constructive dismissal, the claimant’s unfair dismissal claim and his wrongful dismissal claim both failed. The judgment records no monetary award.