YZ v Nelson Town Council and 1 other — 2023

The claimant, YZ, was employed by Nelson Town Council as Town Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer from 23 May 2018. The tribunal recorded that the ordinary unfair dismissal claim and the unlawful deduction from wages claim were not pursued by the claimant. The live issues were breach of contract, protected disclosure detriment, automatic unfair dismissal, and victimisation. The council resolved to dismiss her on 21 April 2020 and the dismissal letter was dated 23 April 2020; the tribunal treated the effective date of termination as 23 April 2020.

A central credibility finding was that the claimant had deliberately inserted additional words into a quotation in her witness statement, making it appear that her 28 May 2019 grievance referred to a male employee when the underlying grievance letter did not. The tribunal found that was a deliberate attempt to mislead and said it fundamentally undermined her credibility. Where there was a conflict of evidence, the tribunal preferred the evidence of the respondents' witnesses.

On protected disclosure, the tribunal held that the 28 May 2019 job-evaluation grievance was not made in the public interest and did not disclose a belief that the council was failing to comply with a legal obligation. The 10 September 2019 informal complaint about bullying and harassment also failed as a protected disclosure because the tribunal found it was about the claimant personally and not shown to be believed to be in the public interest. By contrast, the formal grievance of 26 September 2019 was a protected disclosure: the tribunal accepted that it contained allegations that the council had acted outside its legal obligations when suspending her and that paragraph (l) raised concerns about financial probity. The same letter was also a protected act for Equality Act purposes because it contained clear allegations of discrimination. The email of 29 February 2020 and the appeal against the disciplinary warning on 20 April 2020 were not protected disclosures.

The detriment and automatic dismissal claims failed because the protected disclosure found by the tribunal came after the suspension, which took effect on 18 September 2019. The written warning issued on 14 April 2020 was imposed by a different disciplinary panel, and the tribunal found no evidence that the protected grievance materially influenced that outcome. The later decisions on 14 April and 21 April 2020 were collective decisions of councillors and were materially driven by the breakdown in working relationships and by complaints from Mr Harbour and Ms Doyle, not by the protected grievance. The tribunal also found that the second respondent was not the decision-maker in the disciplinary process or the dismissal decision.

The breach of contract claim succeeded. The tribunal held that the claimant had not fundamentally breached her contract, so the council was not entitled to dismiss her without notice. It further held that she should have been paid for annual leave and pension contributions that would have accrued during the four-week notice period. No quantified remedy was determined in this liability judgment, and the parties were left to agree damages or return for a remedy hearing if they could not do so.