Ms SJ Tinsley v Cutting Edge Services Limited and 1 other — 2021

At a preliminary hearing in Manchester before Employment Judge Sharkett, the tribunal considered whether the claimant's further particulars were merely elaboration of the existing protected-disclosure detriment case or whether some matters amounted to new allegations needing amendment. The earlier case management order had required further detail of the protected disclosure claim under s47B ERA 1996, and the tribunal applied the Selkent amendment principles and the Abercrombie approach to whether new pleadings raised substantially different factual or legal enquiries.

The tribunal held that most of the disputed material could be relied on without a formal amendment. It treated telephone calls and emails as capable of being "meetings" for the purpose of this application, allowed reliance on the mid-2018 meeting, the March/April 2019 call, the 16 July 2019 call and email, the 21 October 2019 email, the 24 October 2019 meeting with the second respondent, and the letters of 8 and 22 November 2019, and it also allowed the claimant to amend to plead loss of the MBO deal as a detriment.

The tribunal also held that the expanded detail about the original detriments, including the allegation of unlawful deductions from final pay, and the additional references to the section 43B categories, did not require amendment and were simply further particulars. It refused the separate new allegation arising from the 24 October 2019 meeting with Vanessa Hamer, because that information had not been pleaded and would require a different factual enquiry, and it refused the later allegations in the 29 November and 9 December 2019 letters because they added little and were not explained as late additions. The reasons contain a numbering inconsistency at paragraphs 27 and 28, but the body of the judgment makes clear which allegations were allowed and which were refused.