Luke v Stoke-on-Trent City Council: [2007] EWCA Civ 761

CA: Mummery, Laws and Moses LJJ: 24 July 2007

The claimant was employed as a special needs teacher by the respondent council under a contract of employment which provided that employment was at a specified centre. Following a dispute with the head teacher of the centre the claimant was off sick between October 2002 and April 2003. The council commissioned a report from an independent investigator to investigate the claimant's complaints of bullying and harassment, which report dismissed all but one of the claimant's allegations and proposed an action plan to assist her return to work at the centre. The claimant did not accept the report's conclusions although she said she was prepared to take part in the action plan, but the council's view was that the action plan could not work on that basis. The claimant refused the council's proposal she should be found equivalent hours doing similar work elsewhere, insisting that she was entitled to work at the centre. The council ceased paying her salary from February 2004. The employment tribunal dismissed her claim for unlawful deduction of wages, holding that the council acted reasonably in deciding that the claimant should not return to work at the centre unless she accepted the report, that by virtue of an implied term it was entitled to require her to work elsewhere than at the centre and that, as she refused to consider doing so, the council was under no obligation to pay her. The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the claimant's appeal.

The claimant appealed.

The Court of Appeal held:
The claim for arrears of salary turned on the content of the employment relationship between the claimant and the council, which was governed by her express contract of employment, construed as a whole and in the context of the surrounding circumstances, and it was not necessary to imply any further term into the contract. It was the claimant's duty to comply with the council's reasonable requirements as long as they fell within the scope of the employment contract, and there was nothing in the contract that entitled her to set the terms on which she would return to the centre or to continue to receive a salary for not teaching there. Because the claimant would not accept the report of the independent investigator, contrary to the reasonable stance taken by the council to enable her to return to the centre, she failed to perform any work for the council under the contract when she could have returned to the centre and the action plan could have been implemented, and, therefore, the council was not obliged to continue paying the claimant.

The appeal was dismissed.

Appearances: Catherine O'Donnell (Hall Smith Whittingham LLP, Nantwich) for the claimant; Sophie Garner (Solicitor, Stoke-on-Trent City Council) for the respondent council.