Mr D Dawson v University of Aberdeen — 2020

This was a telephone hearing on the claimant’s request to have the rejection of his ET1 reconsidered and on his application for a hearing on interim relief. The claimant had submitted the ET1 on 29 July 2020 after receiving a dismissal letter dated 30 June 2020 stating that his employment terminated with immediate effect and that his last day of employment was 1 July 2020. The respondents had not yet entered the proceedings. The tribunal accepted that the claimant wanted to preserve the earlier submission date and ordered that the reconsideration application be continued meantime to a future preliminary hearing.

The tribunal dealt separately with interim relief under section 128(2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It held that an application for interim relief must be presented within seven days of the effective date of termination, and that the effective date of termination is a statutory matter under section 97 ERA 1996. On the claimant’s account, he read the dismissal letter on 2 July 2020. Against that background, the judge held that the first application, made on 29 July 2020, was outside the statutory time limit.

The claimant relied on Dr Handcock v Ter-Berg and other Ter-Berg decisions to argue that there must be a power to allow the interim relief hearing out of time. The tribunal rejected that submission, distinguishing between extensions of time available under the tribunal rules and waiver or alteration of a mandatory statutory time limit. It held that the cited cases did not identify any power to entertain the interim relief application out of time, and refused the request to fix a hearing for interim relief. The judgment states that, if that analysis were wrong, the claimant’s remedy would be an appeal.