Forty-six former members of staff at Harrogate firm CNG have won an employment tribunal against the failed company worth about £210,000.

The ex-colleagues claimed CNG didn’t follow the correct redundancy procedures when the firm went into administration last year.

A tribunal in Leeds agreed with their claim, brought by solicitor Nuala Toner, and awarded them 90 days’ pay as compensation.

However, each claimant’s award was capped at eight weeks and a maximum of £571 a week. It means the total sum awarded to the group as a whole is about £210,000.

Any remaining sum owed can be claimed in the insolvency process, although whether any funds will be left when all creditors are paid remains to be seen.

The compensation will be paid by the government’s Redundancy Payment Service because CNG is in administration.

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The claim, heard last month, was not contested by the administrators of CNG.

CNG ceased trading last year due to spiralling wholesale gas and electricity prices.

Nuala Toner

Ms Toner told the Stray Ferret:

“As early as August 2021, draft management accounts showed CNG had significant financial difficulties and by October 2021 it was accepted CNG was no longer sustainable. Despite this no steps were taken to commence consultation until November 2021, by which point any consultation was pointless.

“When mass redundancies are made, consultation must be meaningful and must be undertaken with a view to reducing the number of redundancies or mitigating the effects of the dismissals. By failing to undertake proper consultation in good time, the employees were denied the opportunity to mitigate the effects of the dismissals.”

A Marks and Spencer employee in Harrogate was unfairly dismissed following an altercation with a customer over a face mask, a tribunal has found.

Deborah Daisy, who worked part-time at M&S Food on Leeds Road in Harrogate, went off work with anxiety in late January 2021.

She told her employer it was down to the covid pandemic in general, but was also caused by an incident in which she asked a customer to put on a face mask in the shop. The customer was then aggressive towards her, she said.

The report from an employment tribunal in Leeds said:

“Adjustments were discussed to facilitate a return to work. Specifically, they discuss the claimant not working on the door of the store as a store host which involved controlling the numbers of people entering the store and reminding them to wear a mask.

“[Marks and Spencer] was asked whether or not she could think of any other adjustments and replied that she could not.”

However, Ms Daisy then told her employer she would feel comfortable to return to work once she was fully vaccinated.

She was referred to occupational health and, during meetings with them, referred to a previous armed robbery and an incident when she confronted a shoplifter as making her feel unprotected in her workplace.

Following a meeting in early March, an occupational health officer said:

“This employee is not fit for work in any capacity at present and timescales for recovery are unclear, therefore it is unlikely that a return will be feasible in the reasonably foreseeable future.

“Should the business have exhausted all reasonable support and all reasonable adjustments have proven unsuccessful, I would recommend formal consideration for ill health retirement with submission of the relevant pension scheme documentation.”

Mrs Daisy had several further phone appointments with her employer over the following months, at each reiterating that she did not feel safe to return to work. Company representatives asked if any adjustments could be made to help her, but she said no.

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In a meeting in June 2021, Ms Daisy was told that she could not be given an update about what action had been taken against the abusive customer “due to GDPR”. She asked about the previous incidents which had made her feel unsafe and was told they had been discussed at previous meetings.

Off work for 24 weeks

At the end of the meeting, Ms Daisy was dismissed on the grounds that she had been off work for 24 weeks and was not able to return.

She submitted an appeal the following month, but another M&S employee concluded her dismissal had not been unfair. However, the tribunal held in Leeds in May found it had been.

The report published at the end of June said:

“Although the respondent [M&S] has produced a standard operating procedure for dealing with external crime, there was no evidence of specific training in this, or in handling abusive customers, in the claimant’s case. There is no evidence before of recording threats to staff or any specific processes for reporting abuse to staff.”

In the report, Employment Judge Knowles said M&S had said Ms Daisy had not submitted an official complaint about any of the incidents. However, the report said Ms Daisy had not been trained in making these and it was unclear why, when she reported them to her manager, they were not treated as official complaints.

The report added:

“Although the number of meetings is indicative of [Mrs Daisy] being adequately consulted from the interview notes it can be seen that they did not discuss the investigations due to vague reasoning concerning GDPR.

“Throughout the process, the claimant [Mrs Daisy] raises incidents, workplace violence, and the respondent [M&S] clearly failed to establish the facts and investigate those incidents which led to the absence and perpetuate the absence.

“This was not even close to a reasonable investigation. The respondent failed to consider reasonable adjustments, stopping shoplifters, locking the doors after hours, investigating her complaints, and there could have been a return to work.”

Judge Knowles found M&S could have engaged more with its employee over its investigation into the incidents and ways of overcoming her safety fears, saying the company could have been expected to wait longer before dismissing her if that process failed to enable her to return to work.

He said:

“It is not for me to comment upon how the respondent might have taken steps to address [Mrs Daisy]’s safety concerns.

“I am surprised that those matters were not explored with [Mrs Daisy] given that [M&S] is a well-resourced retailer in the UK and given that the plight of shopworkers and the abuse they suffer at work is generally well known.”

The compensation to be given to Ms Daisy will be decided at a future date, but will be reduced by 25% on the grounds that she could have been dismissed in future anyway.

A former Ripon Grammar School staff member who was dismissed after just seven months in post has lost an employment tribunal.

Barbara Sheills claimed she was unfairly sacked from the school after whistleblowing on a safeguarding issue she raised when a pupil took an overdose in September 2020.

However, a tribunal held in Leeds found against her. It said there were enough grounds for her dismissal over her conduct and professionalism.

Jonathan Webb, headteacher at the school, dismissed Ms Sheills’ claim on the grounds of “conduct, capability and concerns about a breakdown in her relationship with her line manager which could undermine the smooth operation of the boarding house”.

Safeguarding claim

Ms Sheills started at the school in the middle of the national covid lockdown in March 2020. She worked as a senior house parent and was contracted to North Yorkshire County Council.

The tribunal heard that concerns were first raised by Caroline Day, assistant headteacher of boarding, after Ms Sheills was described as “rude and abrasive” during a meeting to discuss the return of pupils.

She denied this, but the tribunal later found Ms Day’s evidence to be “clear and unequivocal”.

On the same day as pupils returned, staff were given a presentation from the school’s special needs co-ordinator, which included information on “Pupil A”’s welfare needs.

The tribunal heard how the pupil had returned to the school on September 20 after being home for the weekend and that her medication should have been collected by staff and put away in a medical safe.

Leeds Employment Tribunal at City Exchange in Leeds City Centre.

However, her medication was not collected and the following day Pupil A went to Ms Day and told her she had taken an overdose. She was taken to hospital with Ms Day.

Ms Sheills raised a complaint with Marita Murray, deputy headteacher and designated safeguarding lead, on September 22 over Ms Day not collecting the medication.

However, the tribunal heard that the responsibility to collect the medication was a systemic failure rather than that of any individual.

Dismissal backed by evidence

The tribunal heard how repeated concerns were raised by Ms Day over Ms Sheills claiming overtime for tasks which could be done during working hours and using pupils’ numbers instead of names at registration.

It also heard how Mr Webb took advice from the council’s human resources department over Ms Sheill’s sanctioning pupils with an early morning run after they had been talking during the night.

During a meeting with Ms Sheills and her union representative on September 29, Mr Webb described the sanction as “outdated”, “draconian” and against school behavioural policy.

Mr Webb added that another reason for the dismissal was that Ms Sheills had “behaved inappropriately” after she had a conversation about Pupil A’s overdose with a member of the school’s ground staff in September 2020.

There were also allegations that she had edited boarding house logs relating to incident and had also “ignored instructions from Mrs Day and Mr Webb” to maintain an “appropriate boundary” between the school and home while off sick.

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The tribunal found that Mr Webb’s dismissal of Ms Sheills in October 2020 was backed by a “significant amount of evidence”.

Ms Sheills denied wrongdoing and claimed she was sacked because she made an allegation against another staff member.

But, Employment Judge Cox ruled in a report published last week:

“In the light of the clear and convincing nature of Mr Webb’s evidence and the fact that it was supported by a substantial number of emails and meeting notes to which the tribunal was referred, it accepts that Mr Webb had a significant amount of evidence before him to support all these conclusions.

“The tribunal accepts Mr Webb’s evidence that it was unprecedented in his experience that so many concerns about an employee’s behaviour, attitude, professionalism and ability should be raised by a number of staff so early in the employee’s employment.

“There were a number of ways in which the claimant had fallen far below the standards of conduct and capability the school required.”

It added:

“In summary, the tribunal finds that not only were the claimant’s protected disclosures not the principal reason for the claimant’s dismissal, they formed no part of Mr Webb’s decision-making.

“The claimant’s claim that she was unfairly dismissed therefore fails.”

The Stray Ferret approached North Yorkshire County Council for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

An employment tribunal has ruled that a Knaresborough woman was unfairly treated when she was dismissed from her job for refusing to wear a face mask.

Laura Convery worked at the Volkswagen dealership in Knaresborough from July 2019 until October 2020.

Staff at the dealership were sent an email in May 2020 by British Street Fourth Investments Ltd, which owns the dealership, about a return to work and to follow a covid policy in which they were asked to wear masks and social distance.

The tribunal, which was held in Leeds, heard that Ms Convery had refused to wear a face mask because it gave her “panic attacks” and anxiety.

She said she had tried to wear a face covering in supermarkets when the government made them mandatory, but it caused her “severe distress”.

The company offered her the chance to wear a visor instead, but she declined. This led her line manager, Matt Brodgen, to suspend her.

Ms Convery later told Mr Brogden, in a text message in September 2020:

“I physically cannot wear one [a face covering], I have tried on more than one occasion since July 24 and I just can’t do it.

“It creates severe distress for a number of reasons. The main one being that I have a complete aversion to anything covering my face, which stems back from my teenage years I believe.

“I wasn’t aware that this was even a problem until I have tried to wear a face covering in recent months, but it transpires that it is a huge problem for me.”

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Ms Convery was invited to a disciplinary meeting the following October, but said she did not attend after increased stress and anxiety had led to her to being signed off work by her GP.

The dealership terminated her employment with immediate effect on October 15.

Anxiety impairment

However, the tribunal found that Ms Convery had been unfairly treated in her dismissal because “of something arising in consequence of her disability in contravention of section 15 of the Equality Act 2010”.

A judgement published by the tribunal concluded that she was “unable to wear a face covering because of her anxiety impairment”.

The tribunal also found that the company could not have known about Ms Convery’s disability before her text message in September.

However, it added:

“The respondent, the tribunal concludes, ought reasonably to have made further enquiries whether through its occupational health service provider or directly to the claimants own GP from which it is likely it would have become aware of the claimant’s disabling condition.”