Mr D Carswell v Camphill Blairdrummond Trust — 2020

The claimant brought a single unfair dismissal claim. The tribunal found that the respondent dismissed him because it believed he had made a false allegation that Gerry McKeown had threatened to punch a student during an incident in August 2015. The claimant had raised that allegation in a grievance process in 2018 and repeated it during the later disciplinary investigation. The tribunal accepted that the respondent treated the allegation as serious misconduct in a regulated care setting and that Mr Grimes, who conducted the disciplinary hearing, concluded that the allegation was false and merited summary dismissal.

Applying section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Burchell approach, the tribunal found that the respondent had a genuine belief in the claimant’s misconduct, reasonable grounds for that belief, and had carried out as much investigation as was reasonable in the circumstances. The tribunal relied on the statements taken from Gerry McKeown and Alex Gavin, the contemporaneous 2015 incident report, and the fact that the claimant’s allegation had not been raised at the time of the incident but only about two and a half years later. It rejected the suggestion that the decision was a pretext for other reasons.

The tribunal accepted that there were some procedural imperfections, including gaps in the documentation and a relatively short period between the invitation to the disciplinary hearing and the hearing itself, but it found these did not make the dismissal unfair. It also held that the claimant was given the opportunity to seek more time and to call witnesses, and that the investigation into the allegation was within the range of reasonable responses. On that basis, the tribunal concluded that dismissal was a reasonable sanction and dismissed the claim. The appeal against dismissal was also not upheld within the respondent’s process, but the tribunal’s decision was that the unfair dismissal claim failed.