Appeal No.	EAT/1468/99

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 28 March 2000

Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE COLLINS CBE
MS B SWITZER
MR T C THOMAS CBE

HFC BANK PLC	APPELLANT

MRS B HARTLEY	RESPONDENT

Transcript of Proceedings

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	Adrian Crawford, solicitor.	

JUDGE COLLINS:

1.	This is the preliminary hearing of an appeal from the decision of an Employment Tribunal sitting at Reading whose extended reasons were promulgated on 18 November 1999.  It was the decision of a Chairman sitting alone who held that it was not reasonably practicable for the respondent to present her claim for unfair dismissal within 3 months of the date of dismissal. She was accordingly allowed the necessary extension of time to enable her application to proceed.  

2.	In fact the application was presented one day late.  It was agreed at the Tribunal on all hands that the last day for presentation of the originating application was 12 July 1999.  The reason  is that the respondent had given her own notice of dismissal to found her claim of constructive dismissal by letter in which she stated: -
“I am terminating my employment on 13 April.”

Although it does not seem that she retained a copy of that letter she would have received a P45 showing 13 April 1999 as the last day of her employment. 

It is unclear from the reasoning of the tribunal what had gone wrong.  The respondent instructed a solicitor, probably in May 1999 and as the tribunal recite in paragraph 9 of the reasons: -
“On 25 June, the applicant sent her instructions to issue proceedings.”

3.	There is nothing which explains the delay between 25 June when those instructions were sent and 12 July, when the solicitors attempted to serve the proceedings.  What they did was to send the proceedings to the employment tribunal by fax on 12 July.  They sent it to the wrong number for excusable reasons. They discovered at 6.30pm that evening that the transmission had been unsuccessful and did nothing about it until the following morning.  The tribunal decided that in those circumstances it was not reasonably practicable to present the complaint by 12 July. 

4.	This recitation of the facts is sufficient to show that it is reasonably arguable that the tribunal was wrong in coming to that conclusion.  We order that the matter proceed to a full hearing.