Mr R Singh For the v Mr G Khan — 2019

Ms Sareet Sidhu was employed by Dr Sangeeta Rathor, t/a Allenby Clinic/Northolt Family Practice, from 1 February 2013 and was suspended on 4 October 2017 before being summarily dismissed on 4 December 2017. The tribunal found the practice had been run casually with lax financial controls, and it rejected the claimant's case that the later salary increases and the extra £2,000 per month from May 2017 had been authorised. It found that by 2017 the claimant's authorised salary was £56,669.88 per annum based on £27.24 per hour and a 40-hour week.

The tribunal accepted that Dr Rathor genuinely believed the claimant had awarded herself pay rises without authorisation and that this could amount to gross misconduct. It rejected most of the other misconduct allegations as not made out, muddled, or based on practices that had been generally known about and tolerated. However, it held that the dismissal procedure was unfair because the claimant was not given sufficient information or documentation to participate properly in the investigation and disciplinary process, and the appeal did not correct those defects.

On remedy, the tribunal held that even if a fair procedure had been followed the claimant would have been dismissed in any event, and it reduced the basic award to nil and the compensatory award to nil because the dismissal was wholly caused by the claimant's conduct in awarding herself pay rises without authorisation. It also found that the claimant's protected disclosure claim failed because the pleaded matters did not amount to qualifying disclosures made in the public interest, and the dismissal was not automatically unfair for whistleblowing reasons.

The tribunal upheld the wages claim in part. It found that the claimant was suspended on full pay but was underpaid for October and November 2017 because the respondent applied the wrong hourly rate and made no payment for 11 to 17 October 2017. The claimant was awarded £2,668.34 gross. The tribunal did not make any award for the claimed mobile phone or healthcare benefits because they had not been properly set out or quantified.