A woman who was dismissed from her job at a company that provided accountancy services has been awarded £14,120 in compensation after the Employment Tribunal (ET) found that she had been unfairly dismissed.
The woman had been summarily dismissed on 31 July 2023, ostensibly for using her work computer for personal purposes. She brought proceedings before the ET. At a preliminary hearing, the ET ruled that her employment had commenced on 30 October 2017 and permitted her to amend her claim to include a claim for unfair dismissal. Her original claims for wrongful dismissal and holiday pay were withdrawn.
Ruling on her claim, the ET found that diary entries produced by the company detailing a series of performance issues were not contemporaneous documents created on the days of the alleged incidents but had been created after the event. Had the diary existed prior to the preliminary hearing, it would be expected that it would have been produced at that time. In the ET’s view, the entries themselves gave the clear impression of creating a record to support the employer’s case. That conclusion seriously undermined the credibility of the company’s sole director and supported the woman’s account that other disputed documents had never been shown to her.
The diary indicated that a disciplinary hearing had taken place, but the letter of dismissal made no mention of a disciplinary hearing. The ET found that she had simply been informed of her dismissal on 31 July 2023 and that there had been no disciplinary hearing.
The ET found that there had been no prohibition on the woman using her work computer for personal use, and accepted the woman’s evidence that the director had likewise used her computer for personal matters. The director had believed that the woman’s employment had commenced in September 2021, when she had transferred to a new company set up by the director. The ET concluded that the real reason for her dismissal was that the director had wished to dismiss her before she accrued sufficient continuity of service to bring an unfair dismissal claim.
The ET concluded that there were no reasonable grounds to support a conclusion that the woman had been guilty of misconduct. Nor was a reasonable investigation carried out. Dismissal was outside the band of reasonable responses available to a reasonable employer.
As no procedure had been followed and the woman had been dismissed without an opportunity to explain herself, the ET considered it appropriate to award a 20 per cent uplift for failing to follow the Acas Code. The ET ordered the employer to pay her a basic award of £2,064 and a compensatory award of £12,056.
