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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Sambrook v. Miles [2001] UKEAT 0396_01_1409 (14 September 2001) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2001/0396_01_1409.html Cite as: [2001] UKEAT 396_1_1409, [2001] UKEAT 0396_01_1409

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	APPELLANT NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED


 


MR RECORDER UNDERHILL QC

1. This is the Preliminary Hearing of an Appeal against the decision of a Tribunal sitting in Carmarthen that the Respondent was entitled to a redundancy payment of £924.00. We have had written submissions from the Appellant which merely confirmed the contents of the Notice of Appeal, but he has not attended. We therefore proceed to deal with this Appeal on the basis of the material before us.
2. The Respondent employee worked for the Appellant as manager of a cycle shop and garden centre. The Tribunal held that the Respondent was on 15 May given four weeks' notice of dismissal. It also plainly found that the reason for that dismissal was that the Appellant was intending to close the store and accordingly no longer needed a manager: that is not explicitly stated in the Reasons but it follows from the Tribunal's findings and is necessarily implicit in its conclusion.
3. There was plainly therefore prima facie a dismissal for redundancy entitling the Respondent to a redundancy payment. However, at the end of four week period the shop had not closed, and it is common ground that the Respondent continued to work for the Appellant on what both parties described as a week-to-week basis. The Respondent then found another job and ceased to work for the Appellant after 10 July. At that time the business was still going; and it appears from the material before us that it did not close until mid September.
4. The Appellant's case before the Tribunal was that by agreeing to continue to work after 15 June the Respondent disentitled himself to a redundancy payment. The way he puts it is that the Respondent entered into a new contract beginning immediately after the expiry of the old and that he was obliged to give a week's notice to terminate that contract: since it appears to be common ground that he did not do so he is not entitled to a redundancy payment. We do not frankly understand the significance of the Respondent's alleged failure to give a week's notice, but it does seem to us arguable that if it is right that the Respondent entered into a new contract on the expiry of the old he would not have been dismissed for redundancy within the meaning of the Employment Rights Act 1996 – see Section 138(1)(a) - and that when he eventually left a month later that was not by reason of redundancy but because he was resigning to take a new job.
5. The Tribunal dealt with the case by finding as a fact that it had been agreed that the Respondent was not obliged to give any notice. As we say, we are not sure that is the real point. However, the Tribunal also found explicitly that the Appellant had promised the Respondent in terms that he would make a redundancy payment. Such a promise would not give the Appellant any right to a redundancy payment under the statute, i.e. one within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, but it does seem to us to shed light on what happened after 15 June. Reading the Tribunal's findings as a whole it seems clear to us that what happened here was that the Appellant and the Respondent agreed to extend the notice after 15 June, subject to the Respondent's right to go to another job when he found one, and - as the Tribunal found - expressly without prejudice to his right to a redundancy payment. On that basis it does not seem to us that this was a case where a fresh contract in law was entered into after the expiry of the original notice period. Rather, the old contract continued, by agreement, until the Respondent left: the original dismissal stood and remained a dismissal for redundancy.
6. Accordingly, the Tribunal unquestionably came to the right result in law, albeit possibly not by the right route, and this appeal must be dismissed.