Mr M Hilditch v Oldham Athletic (2004) Association Football Club Limited — 2020

The tribunal heard the case in the respondent's absence after attempts were made to contact it, and it relied on the claimant's oral evidence, contemporaneous notes, text messages and the written witness statements. The claimant had been the respondent's Designated Safeguarding Officer since 1 September 1998. The tribunal accepted that at a meeting on 10 January 2019 Mr Sheridan told him that his job had gone and that he was no longer required by the club.

On the facts found, the claimant was dismissed without notice on 10 January 2019 and there was no investigatory or disciplinary process beforehand. The tribunal rejected the respondent's suggestion that the dismissal was justified by gross misconduct or incapability arising from the EFL safeguarding audit or from unopened emails on an old laptop. It found the audit report was not sufficiently damning to justify immediate dismissal and accepted the claimant's evidence that the laptop needed repair and was for a time unusable. Applying s.98(4) ERA 1996 and the Burchell approach to conduct dismissals, the tribunal held the dismissal unfair and made no Polkey reduction because there was no clear evidence that dismissal was inevitable.

The tribunal also found wrongful dismissal because the claimant was entitled to 12 weeks' notice under s.86 ERA 1996 and received none, but it made no separate award because that loss was already included within the compensatory award. It further found a failure to provide a statement of particulars under s.1 ERA 1996, noting that the letter from around 2005/2006 did not satisfy the statutory requirements. In remedy, the tribunal calculated a basic award of £3,836.38 and a compensatory award of £8,271.57 before the statutory cap, including a 25% ACAS uplift and an amount for loss of statutory rights, but the final compensatory award was limited to £7,000 under s.124(1) ERA 1996, producing a total award of £10,836.38.