Mr O Petrov v Rainham Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Limited and 1 other — 2024

This judgment concerns only the claimant's application for reconsideration of the tribunal's earlier judgment of 6 June 2024. The application was sent to the parties by email on 6 June 2024, and the tribunal found that the claimant did not present his application until 12 August 2024, well outside the 14-day time limit. The claimant's explanation was that he had been travelling, working on repairs, and later overseas, but the tribunal treated the core issue as whether there was any good reason for the delay.

Employment Judge Adkinson found that the claimant had access to email and the internet and that there was no technical reason preventing him from seeing the order earlier. The tribunal noted that the claimant said he had not checked his emails for some time and described this as human error. It held that the delay was significant, the application should have been made by 20 June 2024, and there was no good reason to disapply the time limit.

In deciding whether to extend time, the tribunal applied the overriding objective and weighed finality, delay, and the effect on the respondents and tribunal resources. It concluded that extending time would promote delay and could require the respondents to deal with an application they might reasonably have thought would not arise. The application for reconsideration was therefore dismissed and the earlier judgment stood.