Mr K Stanley v Microlise Limited — 2021

Mr Stanley had been employed by Microlise Limited as a Field Service Engineer since 2006. The respondent merged its field service and installation teams into a Technical Hardware Team, and the claimant objected to the changes to his role, hours and duties. He attended some training in June 2019 but refused the session on installation paperwork, saying he had not agreed to the role change and was concerned that attending would be treated as acceptance under his contract. He was issued with a first written warning and, on appeal, was dismissed by Gary Smith at the appeal hearing in August 2019.

On the disability complaint, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had osteoarthritis in his left knee and that he experienced pain when walking more than about half a mile, driving for long periods and kneeling for more than a few minutes. However, it found that these effects were not substantial and long-term adverse effects on normal day-to-day activities within section 6 Equality Act 2010. The tribunal therefore found that he was not disabled at the relevant time and dismissed the reasonable adjustments complaint without determining the remaining disability issues.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was conduct, namely the claimant's refusal to attend training. It accepted that Gary Smith genuinely believed the claimant had committed misconduct, but found there were no reasonable grounds for that belief because the claimant's position had not been properly investigated and the extent of the role change had not been fairly considered. The tribunal also held that the dismissal procedure was unfair because the claimant was summarily dismissed at appeal, which was contrary to the ACAS approach to appeals and outside the band of reasonable responses.

For remedy, the tribunal made a basic award of £9,450 and a compensatory award of £30,074.20. It assessed the claimant's past, ongoing and future loss, then applied a 20% Polkey reduction to reflect a limited chance that he would have been dismissed in any event, and a 20% uplift under section 207A Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 for the ACAS Code failure. It did not reduce the award for contributory conduct or for the covert recording of the 24 January 2019 meeting. The first £6,722.52 of the compensatory award was treated as Post Employment Notice Pay and taxed accordingly.