(sitting alone)10 Miss L Somerville v Represented by: Mr B McQuillan NSPCC — 2018

The claimant worked for NSPCC Childline from November 2009 and became a Supervisor in February 2012. In January 2017 the respondent consulted on national changes to shift patterns, including a proposal to increase live-shift ratios, but that proposal was withdrawn on 27 February 2017. The tribunal found that later discussions in March 2017 about running some Glasgow shifts with one supervisor, because they were regularly over-resourced, did not change the claimant's contractual terms or amount to a back-door implementation of the withdrawn consultation proposal.

The claimant began sickness absence on 31 March 2017 because of work-related stress. At the outset, she and her line manager agreed that she would telephone every few weeks with updates, and the tribunal found that arrangement was reasonable and in line with the respondent's sickness absence arrangements for long-term absence. The tribunal rejected the claimant's argument that the policy required a face-to-face meeting after 15 days' absence, holding that the trigger points in the sickness absence policy were directed to short-term absence, not long-term sickness. It accepted that a structured face-to-face meeting and an occupational health referral would have been appropriate, but found there were no fixed timescales and that both steps would have been taken if the claimant had not indicated she intended to resign.

The tribunal also rejected reliance on the redeployment guidelines, because they applied only to employees under notice of redundancy and the claimant was no longer at risk of redundancy when absent. It found that the respondent had provided support principally through the line manager, that the claimant could have raised any concerns through the recognised trade union, and that the respondent had reasonable and proper cause for its actions throughout. The claim of constructive unfair dismissal was therefore dismissed. The disability discrimination claim had been withdrawn and dismissed before the hearing and was not determined on its merits.