Mrs Helen Broad v Commission Air Limited — 2020

Mrs Helen Broad was employed by Commission Air Limited as a sales executive / National Accounts Manager, on a basic salary of £18,000 with commission bringing earnings to £30,000. In November 2018, after a small time-lapse enquiry from Sky Revolution, a RAMS document was amended to add Sky Revolution's logo and the names of two Sky Revolution employees, and to make two operational changes. The claimant asked a junior employee to make those amendments without seeking or obtaining permission, and she told the tribunal she had not thought about it when challenged.

The tribunal accepted that the amended RAMS caused genuine concern for the respondent. It found that the additions of the two Sky Revolution employees and the further steps to the installation process were very serious breaches because the respondent had not been able to check credentials and there was a risk to the company. On that basis, it held that the claimant's conduct amounted to a repudiatory breach and dismissed the breach of contract claim. It also rejected the unpaid holiday pay claim because it was not satisfied that the contractual holiday term had been varied by agreement.

The unfair dismissal claim succeeded because the process was found to be procedurally unfair at both stages. There had been no disciplinary meeting, the claimant had not been given a proper opportunity to explain her actions, the ACAS Code of Practice was not followed, and the appeal was not handled fairly. The tribunal found that Mr Richardson had no genuine desire to deal fairly with the appeal and that the appeal hearing never took place largely because of his actions.

On remedy, the parties agreed a basic award of £3,810 and later reached a financial settlement recorded as £5,941.16 net. The tribunal did not reduce the basic award under section 122(2) ERA 1996, noting that there had been a single act of misconduct with no aggravating features and that it was only entitled to consider the claimant's behaviour before dismissal. It also found that, despite the unfair procedure, dismissal would probably have occurred three weeks later, and it made a 25% uplift under section 207A(2) TULR(C)A 1992 because of the failures to comply with the ACAS Code.