The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has dismissed a woman’s appeal against a decision of the Employment Tribunal (ET) to reduce the percentage uplift on awards for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination in respect of failure to follow the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) Code of Practice, having significantly increased those awards after the question of remedy was remitted to it.
The woman had been employed by a university, and had been dismissed after being on sick leave for more than two years. The ET subsequently found that her dismissal had been unfair and that she had been subjected to victimisation and discrimination arising from disability. The employer had also failed to make reasonable adjustments. The ET applied the maximum Acas uplift of 25 per cent to her compensatory award for unfair dismissal and her award for disability discrimination.
She made a successful appeal to the EAT, which remitted parts of her claim to the ET. The ET substantially increased her award to more than £1.7 million, net of the Acas uplift. The ET reduced the Acas uplift to 2.5 per cent. She appealed that decision to the EAT, arguing that the ET should have applied the original 25 per cent uplift, which had not been appealed or remitted.
The EAT found that it was clear from the EAT’s decision in the earlier appeal that all of the parts of the award affected by the Acas uplift had been remitted to the ET. It had been necessary for the ET to consider the issues of the compensatory award for unfair dismissal and the award for disability discrimination afresh. In those circumstances, it was a necessary implication that the ET would also have to reconsider the Acas uplift on those awards. It was irrelevant that the employer had not applied for reconsideration of the percentage of the uplift.
The EAT noted that, even if it was wrong about whether it had been open to the ET to reconsider the Acas uplift, the ET’s original findings in respect of it had not been limited to the percentage uplift but also set out the actual amounts that were found to be due. The original uplift had been slightly over £10,000. The woman could not accept only the findings in respect of the percentage level while ignoring the ET’s findings about the overall monetary value of the uplift that it had thought appropriate. Returning to the original amount of the uplift would result in an award considerably less than the sums due to her after the case had been remitted to the ET.
