Mr D Lambert v Land & Utilities Ltd — 2023

The claimant worked for Land & Utilities Ltd as an arborist from around 8 March 2021 and was never issued with a statement of terms and conditions. The tribunal accepted that he had previously raised health and safety concerns, and found that the respondent had a cavalier attitude to health and safety, including sending him to work without a completed risk assessment on the 14 March 2023 job.

On 15 March 2023 there was a heated meeting after the claimant spoke directly to Mr Curran about his concerns. The tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence that Mr Stark told him to go home "on the sick". The claimant later contacted the respondent about when he could return, but there was no correspondence telling him that his employment had ended. A P45 was later prepared showing termination on 30 March 2023, and the tribunal found that the claimant had been dismissed rather than having resigned.

The tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was that the claimant had raised health and safety concerns, which brought the case within section 100(1)(c) ERA 1996 and made the dismissal automatically unfair. In the alternative, the tribunal held that no potentially fair reason for dismissal had been advanced and no fair procedure had been followed, so the dismissal was unfair in any event.

On remedy, the tribunal awarded a basic award of £1,142 and a compensatory award of £18,037.65 for the unfair dismissal claim. In the reasons, it calculated net loss of earnings to 27 December 2023 at £10,090.20, added projected further loss of £5,853.12 for three months, applied a 10% uplift for failure to follow procedure, and included £500 for loss of statutory rights. It also made a separate statutory award of £1,142 for failure to provide written terms and conditions, and recorded total compensation payable of £20,321.65.