BALfour beatty engineering serviCES v Allen (Jurisdictional Points : Extension of time: reasonably practicable)

The Employment Judge had failed to make any findings of fact relevant to considering whether, after expiry of the time limited for presenting a claim, a further period of delay had been reasonable.� Also she had misdirected herself as to the relevance of the fault of a skilled legal adviser and failed to consider whether that affected the reasonableness of not presenting a complaint during the further period.

This is an appeal from the Judgment of Employment Judge Cook, sitting on a pre-hearing review at Manchester on 8 February 2011, the written Judgment having been sent to the parties on 18 February 2011.� By it the Employment Judge decided that although the claim had not been presented within the time limited for doing so, it had not been reasonably practicable to present it within time and, moreover, thereafter the claims had been presented within a reasonable time.

The claim is one of a number of claims that arose as a result of alleged blacklisting of trade union members, by construction industry employers, and the allegations have their origin in the results of an investigation carried out by the Information Commissioner�s Office into a Mr Ian Kerr, who was trading as the Consultation Association who held information on workers in the construction industry.� The information relating to the Respondent in this case appears at page 73 of the bundle.

The Respondent�s allegations in the ET1 that he submitted arise out of a series of applications for work made by him over a long period of time.� Since his claim was not submitted until May 2009 and the allegations cover a period from 2000 to 2006, issues as to the reasonable practicability and reasonableness of submitting the ET1 claim within the period that it was submitted arose, in other words the issues relate to s.139 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act 1992 (as amended).

By a letter dated 17 March 2009, the Information Commissioner�s Office wrote to say that he must give more details before the material could be disclosed to him.� According to the Judgment he sent this information �within a day or two�.� He rang his trade union but, as the Employment Judge concluded, he got no help from that quarter.� He then identified a local solicitor who he thought might be qualified to help.� The solicitor indicated that he wished to see documentary material from the Information Commissioner�s Office before giving any opinion.