A recent Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) case has highlighted the fact that tribunals must not substitute its own judgement for that of the employer when determining whether a dismissal is unfair or not.

Instead, they must determine if the employer acted within a band of “reasonable responses”.

This particular case concerned an administrative worker at a community special school who was dismissed for intervening when staff had to restrain children who were being disruptive. The original tribunal found that no reasonable employer would have acted in such a way, and ruled that the dismissal was therefore unfair. The school appealed the decision.

The appeal was successful. The EAT ruled that the original tribunal had substituted its own judgement on what it would have done about the employee’s intervention, and this was beyond its legal remit to do.

The employer was a special school that faced unique problems, and its staff had received extra training in how to handle troublesome children, however, the admin worker had not been given this training.

As such, the school was entitled to take the view that the worker’s behaviour was inappropriate and could have exacerbated the situation.

The EAT decided that the dismissal of the admin worker was a reasonable response for the school, and so the appeal was successful.

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