Ms J Williams v The Governing Body of Snarestone Church of England Primary School — 2021

This was a preliminary hearing before Employment Judge M Butler sitting alone on 21 June 2021. Ms J Williams had been employed as an Administrator from 5 September 2011 until 22 March 2020, when her employment ended by reason of redundancy. She pursued claims of detriment for making protected disclosures and automatic unfair dismissal under s103A ERA, but not ordinary unfair dismissal. The tribunal was dealing with strike out, deposit, and limitation issues rather than the final merits.

The tribunal identified 14 alleged disclosures. It struck out nine allegations as having no reasonable prospect of success, including the allegations about parents on school premises, the child-collection and insurance point, carrying cash and cheques, the repeat DBS allegation, the login-details disclosure to the Union representative, the fundraising money in a filing cabinet, the SATs allegation, the sports-funding allegation, and the fake-invoice allegation. The reasons given were that several allegations were vague or failed to identify a legal obligation, some were personal rather than public-interest matters, some were made to an inappropriate recipient, and some did not support a reasonable belief that a criminal offence or breach of legal obligation had occurred.

The remaining five allegations were the volunteer DBS allegation, the term-time sickness-call allegation, the teacher-not-going-to-class allegation, the unlocked-back-door and propped-fire-door allegation, and the vaping-in-classrooms allegation. The tribunal accepted these had the potential to be qualifying disclosures, but held they had little reasonable prospect of success and ordered a deposit of £50 for each claim, £250 in total, before they could proceed. The judge also noted that the allegations lacked consistency and detail, and that the disclosure allegations had the appearance of being linked to redundancy rather than public interest.

The tribunal also held that the claims were out of time. The last alleged detriment was on 24 January 2020, and the claim was not presented until 16 August 2020. It rejected the explanation that stress, anxiety, and lack of medical evidence meant it was not reasonably practicable to claim in time, noting that Ms Williams had consulted the Citizens Advice Bureau, had access to union and other advice, and had researched tribunal procedure online.