Julie Evans v Department for Work and Pensions — 2025

Julie Evans, formerly a Work Coach at the Crosby Jobcentre, brought a claim of unfair dismissal against the Department for Work and Pensions following her dismissal on 19 March 2024. The matter was heard at Manchester by CVP on 1 and 2 September 2025 before Employment Judge Holmes sitting alone, with the judgment reserved. The claimant was represented by Mr C Moore of counsel; the respondent by Mr J Kinsey of counsel.

The respondent admitted dismissal but contended that it was for the potentially fair reason of conduct. The conduct findings concerned alleged unauthorised access to customer records, irregularities in Flexible Support Fund applications for Customer X, and inappropriate Universal Credit journal messages. An investigation was conducted by the Government Internal Audit Agency Counter Fraud Investigation Team beginning 18 May 2023.

Applying s.98(4) ERA 1996 and the band of reasonable responses test, the Tribunal found the dismissal was fair both substantively and procedurally. It rejected the contention that contact between the appeal officer Mike Shaw and dismissing officer Kerrie Washington vitiated the appeal. By way of postscript the Tribunal indicated that, had the dismissal been unfair, it would have made a 50% contribution reduction to the compensatory award in respect of two of the three grounds for dismissal.

Source tags (gov.uk)

• Unfair Dismissal

• s.98(4) Employment Rights Act 1996
• band of reasonable responses test
• Polkey
• s.123(6) Employment Rights Act 1996

The full judgment is available on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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