Miss A Hussain v Chief Constable of Hampshire & Isle of Wight — 2025

This judgment concerned the claimant’s application to reconsider an earlier decision refusing interim relief. Employment Judge Cuthbert had heard the interim relief application in public on 28 February 2025 and gave an oral judgment dismissing it. Written reasons had not been requested at the time. The later email from the claimant, dated 7 March 2025, was treated as a reconsideration application.

The underlying interim relief application arose from a claim for automatic unfair dismissal said to be based on protected disclosures. In the earlier interim relief decision, the tribunal considered that the claimant was likely to establish that she had made some protected disclosures, but it did not accept that she had shown a pretty good chance of proving that those disclosures were the principal reason for her dismissal. The respondent’s case was that she was dismissed because of unsatisfactory attendance and high, prolonged sickness absence. The judge said the causation issue was strongly contested and would require examination and testing at a final hearing.

On reconsideration, the claimant relied on alleged procedural failures and on detailed points said to support her case. The judge held that those matters did not show a reasonable prospect of the interim relief decision being varied or revoked, and that they largely sought to re-open points already argued. The judge also said that procedural failures do not necessarily mean an employer had an ulterior motive, and that the claimant’s points about whether she had made protected disclosures were irrelevant because the earlier decision had already proceeded on the basis that she likely had.

The application was therefore refused. The tribunal stated that finality in litigation was relevant to interim relief applications, and that there was no reasonable prospect of the original decision changing. This judgment did not decide the merits of the underlying unfair dismissal claim; it only refused reconsideration of the interim relief ruling.