When can employees expect to benefit from legal representation? Adam Chapman & Andreas White report
As is widely known, employees who reasonably request accompaniment at a disciplinary hearing have a statutory right to be accompanied by a colleague or trade union representative (Employment Relations Act 1999, s 10). While in serious cases employees often request legal representation at disciplinary hearings, such requests are rarely granted. In light of recent Court of Appeal authority (R (on the application of G) v X School and others [2010] EWCA Civ 1), employers will need to consider this issue more carefully. In some cases of sufficient gravity, employees will have a legal right to legal representation at disciplinary hearings.
G was a teaching assistant employed at X school when a complaint of sexual misconduct was made against him. The governors of the school carried out an internal investigation and conducted a disciplinary hearing, following which G was dismissed for abuse of trust. G was not permitted legal representation at the hearing. He appealed, and requested legal representation at the appeal hearing. The governors confirmed that their policy of
