Mr P Boyton and Mrs S Burn v The Parochial Church Council of the Ecclesiastical Parish of Holy Trinity Barnes — 2022

The tribunal heard constructive unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal claims brought by Mr Boyton and Mrs Burn against the PCC of Holy Trinity Barnes. It applied the statutory dismissal provisions in sections 95 and 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the constructive dismissal authorities cited in the judgment, including Western Excavating, Malik, Omilaju, Kaur and Williams. The respondent did not seek to advance a potentially fair reason for any dismissal, so the central question was whether either claimant had been constructively dismissed at all.

For Mr Boyton, the tribunal rejected most of the pleaded allegations but found that the email of 21 March 2020, which moved overall communications responsibility to Mr Copsey without first discussing the change with him, was a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence. It held that later discussions about finance management and software were not themselves a breach, but were capable of contributing to the earlier breach as a last straw. The tribunal did not accept that the later vision/planning discussions were the operative breach; instead, it found that issues 1.1 and 1.4 together amounted to a breach, and that Mr Boyton resigned in response to them. His constructive dismissal claim therefore succeeded, and the wrongful dismissal claim also succeeded because dismissal was established.

For Mrs Burn, the tribunal found that the handling of the Well issue, the meetings she was excluded from, the way pastoral issues were addressed, and the bag dispute did not amount to a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence, either individually or cumulatively. It found that Reverend Cooke had tried to address the Well dispute informally, that Mrs Burn had not pursued a formal grievance, and that the 9 and 10 November 2020 emails about the bags did not create a repudiatory breach, including because one email was private and not intended to be read by the claimants. The tribunal therefore held that Mrs Burn was not constructively dismissed and dismissed both her unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal claims. No monetary remedy figures were set out in this liability judgment.