Ms Angela Delbourgo, of counsel For the v Respondent — 2020

The claimant was employed as Site Manager at Tiverton Primary School and was dismissed after an incident on 24 March 2019 when the intruder alarm was activated at about 1:37am. The tribunal found that when Abel Alarm called him, he did not attend the site, did not contact another keyholder such as the head teacher, and later attended the school at about 9:30am, where a break-in and damage were found. The claimant said he had made an error of judgment and relied on the fact that he had asked Abel to monitor the situation, but the tribunal found there was no evidence that this was an adequate response.

The tribunal held that the reason for dismissal was the claimant’s conduct, not redundancy. It found that the dismissing managers genuinely believed he had committed the conduct alleged, and that there were reasonable grounds for that belief because the claimant had admitted the relevant conduct and the events were objectively verified. The tribunal also held that the investigation was within the range of reasonable responses and that it was not procedurally unfair for the investigation to be carried out by the head teacher.

On the central fairness issue, the tribunal concluded that dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses of a reasonable employer. It found that the claimant’s job description implicitly required him to attend the school in an emergency such as an alarm call-out, or at least to alert another keyholder to attend. The tribunal rejected the argument that the employer’s decision was unreasonable because the claimant had not been suspended or because the disciplinary and appeal panels included a staff governor and a co-opted governor.

The appeal panel upheld the dismissal decision but changed the sanction from summary dismissal to dismissal with contractual notice. The tribunal concluded that, even if the claimant’s conduct were characterised as an error of judgment, dismissal was still fair in all the circumstances. The claim of unfair dismissal therefore did not succeed.