Miss R Thornton v Beech Hall School Limited — 2019

Miss R Thornton had worked for Beech Hall School Limited since 25 March 2002 and was a room supervisor and early years practitioner. The dispute arose after tensions with a nursery nurse, CW, and then with SH. On 18 January 2018 Vikki Bradley met the claimant about an incident with SH; the tribunal accepted that Ms Bradley raised her voice, and the claimant left work. The claimant then went off sick with work-related stress and, on 11 February 2018, wrote to James Allen setting out her concerns about Ms Bradley and the impact on her health, but he did not treat that letter as a grievance or take formal steps to resolve the issues.

The tribunal found that the decisive event was the meeting on 21 February 2018, which had been arranged to discuss the claimant's possible return to work. During that meeting James Allen, without prior warning, produced text messages the claimant had sent to a colleague and told her they could amount to gross misconduct, although he said he would not take action on them. He then allowed Vikki Bradley to join the meeting. The tribunal accepted the claimant's and her mother's broad account of the meeting and found that this approach was ill-judged and likely to damage the employment relationship, particularly given the claimant's work-related stress absence and the absence of any HR support or proper process.

Applying the law on constructive dismissal, including the implied term of trust and confidence and the final straw principle, the tribunal held that the respondent had committed a fundamental breach of contract. It found that the claimant did not affirm the contract and resigned on 28 February 2018 in response to that breach. The tribunal therefore held that she was constructively dismissed and, because no potentially fair reason was advanced on the respondent's behalf, that the dismissal was unfair. Remedy was not finally assessed: the tribunal invited the parties to agree it or seek a further hearing, and noted only that the compensatory award would be subject to the statutory cap, which on the figures discussed in the reasons was about £16,560, but no award was made in this judgment.