Appeal No.	 EAT/1158/96

EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL
58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

	At the Tribunal
	On 13 December 1996

Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE D M LEVY QC
MR W MORRIS
MR R H PHIPPS

MR M P VAZ	APPELLANT

NEW JOURNAL ENTERPRISES LTD	RESPONDENTS

Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised

	APPEARANCES

For the Appellant	NO APPEARANCE BY OR ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLANT	

			JUDGE LEVY QC:   Mr Mauregado Prosdocimus Vaz made an application to the Central Office of Industrial Tribunals received on 11 April 1995.  It claimed that he had been unfairly dismissed; allegations that there was a dishonour of a redundancy agreement and there had been non-payment of salary for January 1995 were among other things which were developed in his application.  A Notice of Appearance was entered by New Journal Enterprises Ltd., the Respondent, named in the application dated 23 May 1995.  There was a hearing at London (North) on 1 September, 30 November and 1 December 1995. 

	For reasons which are not obvious to us, the decision of the Industrial Tribunal was not sent to the parties until 11 September 1996.  It is always regrettable that there is such a delay between the holding of an Industrial Tribunal and the decision being promulgated and we wonder what the reason for it was.  It would be helpful for the Registrar to know.  However that may be, the unanimous decision of the Tribunal was that they had no jurisdiction to entertain the application for unfair dismissal, but an order was made for sums due under the Wages Act.  The Respondent’s application for costs was refused.  

	From that decision Mr Vaz seeks to appeal and we have a letter dated 15 December 1995 running to some eleven pages, which each of us has carefully considered.  The reason that his claim for unfair dismissal failed was, as found in the body of the Extended Reasons, because the Tribunal finds the effective date of termination was 11 January 1995.  Mr Vaz’s application was received out of date and hence the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to hear the claims.

	Having carefully looked at the reasons, we consider that there were certainly grounds on which the effective date of termination could properly be that which was determined and in those circumstances the proceedings were not commenced in time.  In those circumstances the points which are made by Mr Vaz in his elegant letter, fall to the ground.  We see no point in letting this appeal go forward and we therefore dismiss it at this stage.