Appeal No.	 EAT/521/00

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 19 October 2000

Before
MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL QC
MR K EDMONSON JP
MR P A L PARKER CBE

MS M DAWKINS	APPELLANT

ADECCO UK LTD	RESPONDENT

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE BY 
OR ON BEHALF OF
THE APPELLANT	

MR COMMISSIONER HOWELL

1.	In this Appeal which is before us today for Preliminary Hearing, Ms Melva Dawkins seeks to have set aside as erroneous in point of law the decision of the London (North) Employment Tribunal contained in Extended Reasons promulgated on 13 March 2000 and contained in pages 4 – 10 inclusive of the Appeal Bundle before us.  

2.	The background to the case was that the Applicant before the Tribunal Ms Dawkins was a branch manager of the Camden branch of the Respondent’s firm.  Difficulties between her and her employers arose as a result of their decision to merge the nearby Euston branch with the Camden branch to form one super branch, which would require two management personnel namely, a business manager and a branch manager, in place of the management arrangement that there had been before which had involved Ms Dawkins being the branch manager of the smaller Camden branch.

3.	She was dissatisfied with the way the transition was handled, and although she was told that she would be considered for the post of branch manager in the new combined branch, in the end she did not apply for that post on the terms available to her from the employers which required her to submit herself to a fresh selection process for what she regarded as substantially by the same as the job she had already been doing before the changes took place.  

4.	She, therefore, brought proceedings before the Employment Tribunal by originating application dated 24 September 1999 alleging racial discrimination and unfair dismissal on the part of her employers, coupled with a claim for redundancy pay on the basis of an earlier intimation to her that the original post which she had occupied was going to be superseded by the new arrangements.  It is correct to say that at no stage was any formal notice of dismissal issued to her by the employers and the contract of employment was in fact brought to an end by her resignation on 8 September 1999.

5.	The Tribunal found that she had not been dismissed by the employers but had resigned and that she had not been unlawfully discriminated against by the employers on racial grounds.  She has sought to appeal against that decision on grounds set out in her Notice of Appeal dated 25 April 2000, amplified in a Skeleton Argument which has been submitted on her behalf by solicitors.

6.	Those grounds dispute the conclusions of fact reached by the Tribunal on the issues of racial discrimination, and also on whether she was constructively unfairly dismissed, and further contend that the Tribunal erred in failing to adjudicate on what was said to be an entitlement to a redundancy payment by reference to an original intimation that her post was to be superseded, given to her on 20 April 1999.

7.	No-one has appeared on her behalf before this Tribunal today.  The Appeal Tribunal officers have been informed by telephone by the appellant’s solicitor that there will be no attendance by their client or on her behalf today, and that on her behalf they are content for the matter to be dealt with by us on the basis of the written material before us including the Skeleton Argument to which I have referred.

8.	We have considered the whole of the papers before us including the Tribunal’s Extended Reasons and the argument put forward on behalf of the appellant and we are satisfied that there is no arguable ground of appeal in any of the contentions put forward, which would justify us in directing that this case should go forward to a full hearing before the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

9.	Consequently, there being in our view no arguable error of law in the decision of the Employment Tribunal and its reasons having been adequately set out in the statement provided, we have concluded that there would be no useful purpose in allowing this appeal to continue any further.  We accordingly now unanimously dismiss this Appeal.