Mr K Khokhar v Represented by: Mr J Lawson, Solicitor British Telecommunications plc — 2025

British Telecommunications plc investigated Teams messages from October 2024 after a January 2025 report about misuse of communications platforms at the Dundee contact centre. Mr Khokhar and Ms Miller were each suspended, invited to disciplinary hearings on allegations framed around inappropriate comments, inciting violence, and misuse of systems, and then dismissed for gross misconduct in February 2025. The tribunal found that the decision-makers relied on BT's standards, code and zero-tolerance language, but the Code was not provided to Mr Khokhar in a form he could access after suspension, and Ms Miller was not sent the Code or the Diversity and Inclusion Policy before her hearing.

Applying s.98 ERA 1996 and the Burchell approach, the tribunal held that Mr Khokhar's process was fundamentally flawed. The allegation put to him was not the same as the reasons later relied on at dismissal, no meaningful investigation of context was carried out, and the tribunal found the relevant managers had approached matters with a closed mind. It accepted his evidence that the comments were inappropriate but made as banter in a remote-working Teams chat where staff had developed a practice of venting after difficult calls. The tribunal found no reasonable employer would have treated the remarks as genuine incitement to violence or dismissed him for them, and it made no deduction for contributory conduct.

The tribunal reached the same conclusion for Ms Miller. It found she had made an inappropriate one-off comment in a team chat culture that had grown up during remote working, and that the respondent did not properly investigate her mitigation, the use of Teams within the team, or the wider context. It held that dismissal was outside the band of reasonable responses and that the appeal process also reflected a closed mind. Mr Khokhar was awarded £26,395.94, made up of a £12,950 basic award and compensatory losses; Ms Miller was awarded £31,553.04, including a £13,300 basic award, and her award included a prescribed element of £12,714.81 for recoupment.