Mrs R Ejvet v Genesis Education Trust Ltd — 2019

Mrs Ejvet, the Executive Head Teacher at St Margaret's, was dismissed after audit reports and a disciplinary investigation into the award of a £145,000 building contract to Elite Building and Maintenance Limited, a company owned by her husband and brother-in-law. The tribunal found that the contract had been approved without a proper tendering process, that 2/3 of the quote, £97,000, had been paid in advance, and that the school had not followed its own procurement policy or the local authority and DfE tendering guidance.

The disciplinary panel upheld allegations of financial management failings, flaws in the tendering process, and failures in safer recruitment. It did not uphold allegations that she had misled the governing body about Genesis Education Trust instructions or failed in due diligence when the school transferred to the Trust. On appeal, Mr Moss and the appeal panel treated the matter as a rehearing of the remaining allegations and upheld the same three core findings.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal held that the reason for dismissal was conduct under s.98(2) ERA 1996 and that the respondent's decision was within the range of reasonable responses under s.98(4). It rejected the claimant's procedural complaints about suspension, venue, the disciplinary policy used, the scope of the investigation, and the appeal process, and it considered the appeal to have been fair and independent.

For whistleblowing, the tribunal was prepared, for the sake of argument, to treat the 20 November 2017 complaint as a protected disclosure under s.43B(1), but found it played no causative role in the disciplinary process or dismissal. The disability discrimination claims also failed: the respondent accepted that work-related stress and depression were a disability, but the tribunal found no treatment because of something arising from disability under s.15 and no failure to make reasonable adjustments under s.20, noting among other things that Occupational Health said she could attend a meeting in the first week of January and that the respondent had to proceed because of the school's situation.