Mr R Crow v J & I Pipework Services — 2021

Mr Crow had originally brought complaints including disability discrimination and redundancy pay, but those claims were withdrawn earlier in the proceedings. The only live claim before the tribunal was unfair dismissal, and the preliminary hearing was limited to whether that claim had been presented in time and, if not, whether the tribunal should exercise its discretion to hear it out of time.

The tribunal preferred the documentary evidence and found that the effective date of termination was 17 July 2020, as stated in the respondent’s email of 8 July 2020, rather than 23 July 2020 as the claimant said. On that basis, the ordinary time limit expired on 16 October 2020. ACAS Early Conciliation paused the clock and extended the limit to 15 December 2020, but the ET1 was not lodged until 15 January 2021, so the claim was out of time.

Applying the statutory test under s.111 ERA 1996 and the authorities cited, including Porter v Bandridge Ltd, Wall's Meat Co Ltd v Khan and Dedman v British Building and Engineering Appliances Ltd, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had been under stress and had sought advice, but found that the operative cause of the delay was ignorance of the time limit. It held that this ignorance was not reasonable because the claimant had not made all reasonable enquiries and it was reasonable to expect both CAB and the claimant to be aware of the time limit. The tribunal therefore decided it was reasonably practicable to present the claim in time, declined to exercise discretion under s.111(2)(b), and dismissed the unfair dismissal claim for want of jurisdiction.