EAT The claimant, the assistant manager of a residential care home run by the respondent partnership, was dismissed for gross misconduct in having toileted two residents in a bathroom where another elderly resident was sitting in her wheelchair naked, waiting to be bathed. The tribunal found that that was a practice which had occasionally occurred when the home was being run by its previous owners from whom the respondents had only just taken over the business. To proceed to dismissal was, in these circumstances, unfair, as was using a disciplinary procedure which did not give the claimant advance notice that she was at risk of dismissal and involved the claimant’s appeal being determined by the same partner who had dismissed her. The respondent appealed, arguing that the claimant had clearly committed an act of gross misconduct and that it was manifestly within the band of reasonable responses to dismiss. The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed the appeal. The tribunal had, correctly, considered what was the extent of the range of reasonable responses and were entitled to find as they did.
Lady Smith
[2006] UKEAT 0005 – 06 – 0507
Bailii
England and Wales
Updated: 22 August 2021; Ref: scu.243449 br>