Ms J Carr v Patmore Co-operative Limited — 2021

This was a remote preliminary-issue hearing in Ms J Carr's case against Patmore Co-operative Limited, heard by Employment Judge Corrigan sitting alone. The issue was whether certain email communications in the unredacted bundle were admissible or excluded by s111A Employment Rights Act 1996. The tribunal referred to the parties' submissions and the ACAS settlement-agreements code, but the decision made here was confined to admissibility.

The tribunal found that the communications in question were made before termination, because the employment had not yet ended when they were exchanged. It rejected the argument that the Claimant's statement that she intended to leave at some later point meant termination had already occurred. The tribunal held that the emails concerned proposed terms of departure, including a possible date of leaving, arrangements to recruit and train a replacement, and an additional financial payment in return for extending employment for a period.

On that basis, the tribunal held that the third paragraph from the bottom of page 66 and the emails at pages 68-69 were pre-termination negotiations within s111A(2) and therefore inadmissible in proceedings on an unfair dismissal complaint. The tribunal said that page 69 repeated the same proposal and that later pages referred back to it. It did not take the communications into account in the substantive hearing and used the redacted bundle instead.