Mrs J Blankley v Boots UK Limited — 2019

The issue before the Tribunal was whether the claimant's ET1 was valid where it used the early conciliation certificate number from a second ACAS early conciliation process. The parties agreed the relevant chronology: the claimant's effective date of termination was 11 February 2019, the first early conciliation process ended on 17 April 2019, and the ET1 submitted on 28 May 2019 used the certificate number from a second process started and ended on that same date.

The Tribunal accepted that rejecting the claim form would produce an injustice and recorded that the claimant and her adviser had acted scrupulously and fairly. However, applying the authorities, the Tribunal held that the second early conciliation certificate was a nullity and of no effect, so the ET1 did not contain an accurate early conciliation number.

The Tribunal concluded that rules 10 and 12 were mandatory in these circumstances and that it had no discretion to allow the claim to proceed. The claim form was therefore rejected because it omitted an accurate early conciliation number; the substantive claims were not determined on their merits.