Bury College Employment Tribunal

The College judged the claimant's attitude as evidence of whether he understood the seriousness of his conduct and whether it could have confidence that it would not happen again. But what happens when that same reasoning is applied to the people responsible for the process? A significant part of Bury College's case against the claimant concerned his response to the allegation , not simply the fact that he had used the word. The claimant accepted that he had used the word. He apologised for doing so. What he did not accept was the allegation that he had called a student that word . His position was that he had repeated the word back as a question to a student who had just used it. Sarah Walton's own evidence records that, at the later investigation meeting, the claimant apologised for his use of the word and appeared accepting that his behaviour was not acceptable. Nevertheless, Becky Tootell relied upon what she regarded as a lack of remorse and accountability, whi...

A closer examination of the 90% reduction in compensation following Bury College's unfair dismissal of a maths teacher An Employment Tribunal found that Bury College had unfairly dismissed a maths teacher . Despite that finding, the Tribunal concluded that there was a 90% chance the teacher would have been dismissed anyway had the College followed a fair procedure. That resulted in a 90% reduction in the compensation that would otherwise have been payable. The argument is not that dismissal was impossible. The question is whether the evidence supports a reduction as high as 90% . That requires looking not simply at the flawed investigation that actually took place, but at what a genuinely fair process would probably have looked like from the moment the complaint was first made. And that raises the central question of this article: Did the Tribunal's assessment rely on evidence that may never have arisen from a fair investigation?   The allegation was speci...