In the courts - Employment
Special relationship with charity flaws MOD dismissal
Mr Botham, employed as a youth worker by the Ministry of Defence commanding British forces in Germany, had been dismissed without notice on 30 September 2003 by his employers for offences falling within the category of ‘gross misconduct for the purposes of para 4.7 of vol 5 of the MOD personnel manual’. The evidence for this was largely based on a report prepared by SSAFA, a charity which provided social work services to the MOD. Mr Botham took his employers to the Employment Tribunal which held on 7 May 2007 that he had been unfairly dismissed, although was 55 per cent to blame, and as a result of this awarded £69,000 at a subsequent liability hearing. The tribunal held that the MOD’s deciding officer had not conducted a fair decision-making process because he had relied on opinions from the joint response team of the charity – in particular that of an individual manager he had ‘known for 14 years’ rather than the complete range of evidence available to him, which included a report doubting the veracity of some of the allegations against Mr Botham. The MOD appealed on grounds that the tribunal had failed to take into account the social work investigation and the fact it was an independent organisation. The EAT did not agree and upheld the original decision.
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