Appeals

A defective disciplinary hearing, for example, one where the employee did not get the chance to prepare a case, can sometimes be put right on appeal, as long as the person hearing the appeal was not involved in the earlier hearing (Byrne v BOC [1992] IRLR 505).

An appeal does not normally have to be a complete rehearing of the case, but it must be comprehensive (Taylor v OCS Group Ltd [2006] EWCA Civ 702).

An appeal, especially if it is a rehearing, can result in a more severe sanction, for example a Final Warning being converted into a dismissal, but only if dismissal would have been a reasonable outcome of the original hearing, applying the “band of reasonable responses” test.

Except in the very smallest of organisations, the appeal should be heard by someone other than, and senior to, the dismissal decision-maker.