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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Higgins v Ideal Cleaning Contractors Ltd [2000] UKEAT 1474_99_0606 (6 June 2000) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2000/1474_99_0606.html Cite as: [2000] UKEAT 1474_99_606, [2000] UKEAT 1474_99_0606

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	NEITHER PRESENT NOR REPRESENTED
For the Respondent	MR M CONDRON Representative Instructed by: Penninsula Business Services Stanford House 361-365 Chapel Street Manchester M3 5JY


 


MR JUSTICE LINDSAY (PRESIDENT)

1. In this matter Mr Higgins appeals against the Registrar's refusal to extend time for his Notice of Appeal. He does not attend before me. The Respondent, Ideal Cleaning Contractors Ltd does attend, by Mr Condron. On 15 March 1999, Mr Higgins lodged an IT1 claiming constructive dismissal and in that from he claimed that 1998 was the end date of his employment. He does not actually give a date but a year. The company's IT3 asserted that in his employment there was a normal retirement age of 65 and that Mr Higgins was 67 at the point of his termination. He had in any event, they said, resigned and they gave as his end date of employment 24 December 1998. There was then a hearing at the Employment Tribunal and on 29 September 1999 the decision was sent to the parties. Mr Higgins had not attended at the Employment Tribunal and so no argument, of course, was heard on his behalf. He had been held by the Tribunal to have been 67 years of age at the point of dismissal and the Tribunal accordingly held that it had no jurisdiction by reason of his age- see s.109 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.
2. The 29 September was the date when the decision was sent to the parties. The 42 days period during which an appeal can be lodged expired therefore on 10 November 1999. On 29 November 1999 a letter from Mr Higgins was received which has been treated as being an attempt at a Notice of Appeal, received here at the Employment Appeal Tribunal. In it he claims that he was within what is called the 'whistle blowing exception'. I will refer to that later. That point was reiterated on 3 February; he said again that he was a whistle blower. On 16 February the learned Registrar refused an extension of time and on 24 February, Mr Higgins appealed against that refusal. The only reason given by Mr Higgins for delay in this matter was the time taken up seeking appropriate guidance and literature from the Citizens Advice Bureau and from a person who was voluntarily helping Mr Higgins with the case. That is no good or exceptional reason for delay.
3. The whistle blowing point which, as it seems, was the point which had taken up time had not been argued below at all; indeed nothing, of course, had been argued on Mr Higgins behalf below because no one had attended on his behalf, nor had he attended. It is, as it seems to me, in any event a hopeless point. He was dismissed in December 1998 and the whistle blowing provisions took effect from 2 July 1999 so that not only would he not be able to take the whistle blowing point on appeal because it had not been taken below, but, even if he had been able to take it, it looks as if it was a totally doomed point. If he had wished to take it he should have attended at the hearing below and have led evidence on the subject. Indeed, without that evidence, it is quite impossible to see how what he claims to have done could have been within the definition of a qualifying disclosure within the provisions of s.103a and s.43 (8) (f) of the Employment Rights Act. What it comes to is that this is a late attempt at an appeal; no exceptional reason is given for the delay- compare the well known case of Abdelgafar and the well known case of Aziz –v- Bethnal Green and their requirements of evidence of exceptional reasons. Moreover, so far as one can tell, from a quick look at the merits, as to the prospects of the appeal, they would seem to be quite hopeless. In the ordinary way the merits are not greatly investigated because otherwise one gets into a position in which one needs to hear the appeal in order to determine whether the appeal should be heard. However, to the limited extent to which the merits are appropriate, they would here seem to be hopeless. I remind myself that again Mr Higgins has not attended and, as it seems to me, the Registrar was entirely right to do as she did on 16 February and, exercising the discretion afresh, I, too, see no case for extension of time and must therefore dismiss the appeal.