TIME LIMIT

HM Prison Service v Barua: UKEAT/387/06

EAT: Underhill J: 15 November 2006

In February 2005 the employers reduced the claimant's pay without his consent, and on 25 April 2005 he resigned with notice to take effect on 31 July. Meanwhile, he lodged a grievance with the employers on 27 June. In January 2006 the claimant made complaints to an employment tribunal of unfair constructive dismissal pursuant to section 111 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and unauthorised deduction of wages and breach of contract pursuant to section 23. At a pre-hearing review a tribunal chairman decided that the extended time limit for making a claim prescribed by regulation 15 of the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004 applied to the claimant's complaints, in that, although his grievance had been lodged before the effective termination of his employment, or reduction in salary, when the three-month time limit for bringing proceedings under sections 23 and 111 of the 1996 Act started to run, the grievance was "within that normal time limit" and there was jurisdiction to hear the claims.

The employers appealed.

Underhill J held:
The statutory time limits to which regulation 15 of the Employment Act 2002 (Dispute Resolution) Regulations 2004 referred were provisions concerned with setting a date after which proceedings might not be brought and were not as such concerned with prescribing a start date, and, when regulation 15 referred to a grievance being lodged "within" the normal time limit for the jurisdiction, the only limit being referred to was the end of the period in question. Accordingly, for the purposes of extending time under regulation 15, the requirement that the claimant should have lodged a grievance "within that normal time limit" was to be read as meaning only that it must have been lodged before the end of that period, and the tribunal had jurisdiction to hear the claims.

The appeal was dismissed.

Appearances: David Jones (Treasury Solicitor) for the employers; Sophie Belgrove (Irwin Mitchell) for the claimant.