An appeal by the Respondent, against the ET's decision upholding the Claimant's claims including unfair dismissal, was made out of time. The Respondent's representative emailed documents including the Notice of Appeal to the EAT on the deadline date, but a matter of hours after the 4.30pm cut-off time; copies of the ET1 and ET3 were not received by the EAT until about a month after the deadline date.

The EAT held that there was a good excuse (or exceptional circumstances) in respect of the late receipt of documents which were in fact sent to the EAT on the deadline date; however, the failure to send the ET1 and ET3 on time, or to realise sooner that they had not been sent, was the result of one or more acts of avoidable carelessness or lack of sufficient proactive attention to the matter; consequently, the extension of time was not granted and the appeal was dismissed.