Job Centre Manager Wins Unfair Dismissal Claim

A job centre manager who said that she was dismissed because of her zeal in helping a vulnerable teenager to find work has succeeded in her claim for unfair dismissal at the Court of Appeal (Graham v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions – Jobcentre Plus).



Janet Graham worked for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as an Advisory Service Manager, with responsibility for 15 staff, at Jobcentre Plus in Birkenhead. In the course of her work, she provided assistance to a young man who was a friend of her daughter. His mother had died of cancer and his father was an alcoholic and abusive. He had no family to support him and was finding it impossible to survive on benefits.



The DWP has a clear policy on standards of behaviour. Staff must not use their positions to help friends, family or acquaintances. An acquaintance is defined as ‘someone whose personal circumstances become known to an employee of the Department outside work’.

 

Other staff members complained that Mrs Graham had breached security by taking the teenager into a staff canteen for a sandwich and had ‘dealt with Jobsearch interviews on his behalf’. She was also alleged to have accessed the teenager’s records and to have left her smartcard unattended whilst allowing him to use her work computer.



After an investigation, pending the outcome of which Mrs Graham was sent to work at another office, her employer decided that she was acquainted with the teenager and had overstepped the mark in helping him. She was dismissed from her post for gross misconduct in March 2009.

  

Mrs Graham brought a claim for unfair dismissal. The Employment Tribunal (ET) rejected the allegation that she had obtained access to the teenager’s personal records whilst he was an acquaintance and ruled that her dismissal was an excessive response. In its view, no reasonable employer would have dismissed her in the circumstances.

 

This decision was subsequently overturned by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), which ruled that the ET had wrongly substituted its own views for those of the employer. The EAT found that it was a case in which a very experienced manager had knowingly breached the rules to help a vulnerable young man try to find a job. In the circumstances, dismissal ‘plainly and unarguably fell within the range of reasonable responses’. Mrs Graham challenged the EAT’s ruling.

 

The Court of Appeal upheld her appeal and restored the original decision of the ET. With regard to the allegation that Mrs Graham had accessed the young man’s records, the ET had found that this occurred before he became an acquaintance. Also, the fact that she was allowed to do similar work but at a different job centre and was permitted access to the computer system there indicated that her employer’s confidence and trust in her had not been so comprehensively impaired that she could no longer remain in its employment. Mrs Graham’s summary dismissal did not ‘sit well’ with that decision.



The Court held that it was not reasonable to regard Mrs Graham’s actions as gross misconduct. Lord Justice Pill concluded, “To respond to such conduct as was established by instantly dismissing an employee with 30 years unblemished service was outside the range of reasonable responses.”