The claimant was an agency worker assigned by an employment agency to work for the respondent. Following the termination of his assignment, he brought three complaints to the ET. At a preliminary hearing, the ET held that it lacked jurisdiction to determine two of the complaints. It struck out the third complaint concerning detriment under the Agency Workers Regulations on the ground that the claimant had conducted the proceedings in a 'scandalous, unreasonable or vexatious manner' largely as a result of correspondence the claimant had sent the ET. The claimant’s appeal was limited to a single ground which was that, as the correspondence had not been in the bundle and not put before him at the hearing, he had been deprived of a reasonable opportunity to make representations.

Judge Barry Clarke dismissed the appeal as 1) the claimant’s correspondence with the ET formed part of the conduct of the proceedings so the ET was entitled to consider that correspondence when determining whether to strike out; 2) the claimant had not been deprived of a reasonable opportunity to make representations as the strike out application had been identified in advance; the correspondence was an obvious component of that conduct; the claimant was the author of the correspondence; the ET indicated at the hearing that it would consider it; and the claimant was questioned about its contents and; 3) the ET’s consideration of the claimant’s correspondence did not amount to impermissible judicial investigation into the facts of the case.