Mr Dale White v T.P.M. Management Limited Heard: Online, using Microsoft Teams — 2026

Mr Dale White was dismissed without notice on 10 February 2025 for alleged gross misconduct concerning outstanding recommendations in a November 2022 Fire Risk Assessment and his inaccurate email of 20 July 2024 stating that all Priority A items had been dealt with. The Tribunal accepted that conduct was the reason for dismissal, that the respondent genuinely believed Mr White had committed serious misconduct, and that there were grounds for concern. It did not find that the July 2024 email was a deliberate lie.

The unfair dismissal complaint succeeded. The Tribunal found that the respondent and its external HR advisers did not adequately address the distinction between Mr White's informal practical involvement in fire-safety matters and the respondent company's own responsibility, the ambiguity of his role, the absence of proper fire-safety training, weaknesses in the respondent's systems, or the realistic possibility that the email reflected confusion or overstatement rather than dishonesty. In light of Mr White's long service, clean disciplinary record and those mitigating circumstances, dismissal without prior warning fell outside the range of reasonable responses. The appeal repeated rather than remedied the deficiencies in the earlier reasoning.

The wrongful dismissal complaint also succeeded. The Tribunal found that Mr White's proven shortcomings concerned performance, judgment and communication within an ill-defined and weakly supervised system. They did not constitute repudiatory breach or gross misconduct in the contractual sense, so the respondent was not entitled to dismiss him summarily and he was entitled to notice or pay in lieu.

The unlawful deductions from wages and associated national minimum wage complaint was dismissed. The Tribunal accepted that some historic underpayment occurred, but found that the respondent paid a £822.28 correction and increased Mr White's salary in July 2024. It found no continuing series of deductions after that correction, held that the complaint was presented outside the section 23 time limit, and was not satisfied that the evidence established any further sum due. Remedy for the successful dismissal complaints was left for a separate hearing.