The claimant has been dismissed after a disciplinary process following some concerns about inspection of bus tyres at his depot and failure to report the problem swiftly enough. The employment judge has accepted that the dismissal was unfair partly because she found the claimant had not received adequate training on the matter and he was dismissed because the manager did not like his approach to any investigation.

The respondents appealed on the grounds that the issue of training and the scope of the charge against the claimant, relied on by the judge in her decision, had not been argued before her. Mathew Gullick KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, agrees stating at [32]

“If it was obviously clear that both the points raised by the Employment Judge were correct ones and that no evidence or argument might conceivably have been raised to contradict them, then the position might have been different. However, I consider that is not the case here.”

The case was therefore remitted for rehearing before a different judge.