M Kearns (sitting alone) Mrs P K Hamilton v Represented by:20 Mr Baird Lay representative Clarins UK Ltd — 2018

Mrs P K Hamilton worked for Clarins UK Ltd from 7 October 2013 until she resigned on 27 March 2017. She had applied for a regional commercial training manager role in July 2016, later covered the Manchester role temporarily, and then interviewed for the permanent Manchester post in January 2017. After she was unsuccessful, she requested feedback and lodged a formal grievance on 5 February 2017 about the interview process and the way her grievance was handled.

The tribunal preferred the claimant's evidence about the 3 February 2017 call with Stewart Clark. It found that he had already given her strong personal support and expressed a view that there was a grievance, so he was no longer an appropriate person to determine it. The respondent departed from its grievance policy without her consent, did not arrange a grievance meeting, did not advise her of the right to be accompanied, and did not ask for the timeline notes referred to in her grievance. The tribunal held that this conduct, taken together, was likely to destroy or seriously damage the relationship of trust and confidence and therefore amounted to a breach of the implied term.

The tribunal found that the claimant resigned in response to that breach and had not affirmed the contract. It therefore held that she was dismissed for the purposes of s.95(1)(c) ERA 1996 and that the dismissal was unfair. The separate notice-pay/breach-of-contract claim failed because the tribunal found no recoverable loss from the absence of notice. It also found that the claimant did not suffer any ongoing loss after she started a new permanent job on 25 July 2017.

Remedy was assessed at a basic award of £2,155.50 and a compensatory award of £5,915.50. The compensatory award included past loss, a £400 loss-of-rights element and a 20% uplift under s.207A TULRCA 1992 for the respondent's failure to comply with the ACAS grievance procedure. The tribunal stated that the Employment Protection (Recoupment of Jobseekers' Allowance & Income Support) Regulations 1996 did not apply.