Crown employees

Crown employees (those who work for government departments and agencies including civil servants) are entitled to most of the statutory rights set out in the Employment Rights Act 1996 except for redundancy and collective consultation rights, minimum notice and insolvency payments. Instead they have equivalent or better rights under agreements within their own employment.

Certain categories of Crown employees have, in some circumstances, alternative avenues for pursuing legal claims. For example, if prison officers and the police (including British Transport Police) are dismissed, the remedy lies not through the tribunals but by way of a special complaints body.

They are entitled to be treated no less favourably than they would have been by the employment tribunals, or to be given the reasons why they were not (R v Civil Service Appeal Board ex parte Cunningham [1991] IRLR 297).

The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 places prison officers in the same category as the police, and section 127 of that Act removes their right to strike. Although section 127 was disapplied in the public sector in England, Wales and Scotland, the government has re-introduced a strike ban for prison officers in England and Wales and it still applies in Northern Ireland and in the private sector everywhere. Scotland still has a voluntary agreement that prison officers will not take industrial action.

The Prison Officers Association (POA) has a pending claim before the European Court of Human Rights challenging the government’s prohibition on prison officers taking industrial action.