Irrelevant Procedural Errors in Dismissal Not Unfair

The Appeal Tribunal has indicated that judges are getting tired of hearing cases based on procedural oversights and overlooking the real issue. The tribunals have sent a clear message. Stop getting hung up on procedure which has no relevance to the reason for dismissal.

In the case in question, the Appeal Tribunal looked at a case where an employee was dismissed for 2 reasons.

The employee based his case on things such as the fact that he was not given full transcript of investigation interviews. (It turns out that he was not given the sections pertaining to charges which were not eventually pursued at disciplinary, he was only given those sections which related to the charges which were heard.)

Another issue was that the decision maker used a pre-written script written by HR.  The tribunal found as a fact that the decision maker had not been influenced by the HR department and so it didn’t matter.

Finally, some material was obtained by the employer in a computer search which may have breached the employee’s human rights. This could render the dismissal unfair, except that this material was not used to justify the dismissal.

The upshot of this case is that there are many pitfalls in any route leading to dismissal, but the important thing is to ensure that procedural errors do not feature in the actual reason for dismissal.   This approach lends weight to the idea that employers should avoid piling up multiple charges on a matter that may lead to dismissal, and simply focus on the real reason underlying the problem.

The full case can be read at the following link: Mr_J_Alom_v_The_Financial_Conduct_Authority__2025__EAT_138.pdf