Miss N Uddin v Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust — 2018

Miss N Uddin was employed by Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust as a night telephonist on the switchboard at St Pancras Hospital. The tribunal found that, after the introduction of a new e-rostering system in summer 2015, staff were told that shift swaps and other changes had to be notified to management and approved, and that the earlier informal custom and practice of swapping shifts between team members had ended. The claimant was investigated after CCTV and other evidence suggested she had not attended a number of rostered shifts, had left early on occasions and had arrived late on others.

The tribunal accepted that the respondent genuinely believed the claimant had disregarded its policies and instructions about shift changes, and that the investigation was reasonable. Applying BHS v Burchell, it found that the respondent did not genuinely believe the claimant had committed fraud, but did believe she had repeatedly changed shifts without authorisation. It also rejected the argument that the investigation was unfair because management had not viewed every CCTV recording or kept the deleted footage, finding that the claimant had accepted she knew the procedures and had not brought forward evidence of all the hours she said she made up.

On sanction, the tribunal held that the claimant’s conduct was misconduct but not gross misconduct. It found that the absences were frequent but not ‘extreme’, that the service impact was minimal, that cover was generally available, and that there was no financial loss to the respondent. The tribunal concluded that summary dismissal was therefore outside the band of reasonable responses and that the respondent had not established a repudiatory breach justifying dismissal without notice. It also found that the claimant had contributed to her dismissal by repeatedly failing to notify management of shift changes, and said that any award should be reduced by 50% on that basis. No remedy figure was assessed in this judgment because remedy was left to a later hearing.