Posted: Friday, 4 January 2019 @ 13:43
The Supreme Court has just ruled that it was not a breach of an employee's human rights to refuse him the right to be accompanied by a lawyer at a disciplinary hearing.
The case concerned a teaching assistant who was alleged to have acted inappropriately towards a pupil at the school at which he worked.
This judgment is of significance to public sector employers, which should now be aware that an employee is not automatically entitled to legal representation at a disciplinary hearing that might result in him or her being referred to the authorities and potentially placed on the children's barred list.
Despite this, the Supreme Court has stressed that the issue is fact sensitive and leaves open the possibility that legal representation may be required in limited cases, although it stopped short of providing examples where this would be the case.
Let us move beyond the analysis of the judgment.
As a tactical move if the matter is sensitive(e.g allegations of a sexual nature/criminal nature) I think there is merit in having a lawyer present as a representative. It is not just a case of complying with the law; there is a benefit in seeing how the case would play out in Court later. Sometimes it is better to go through the pain of dealing with a lawyer early rather than later.
Justin Patten
Employment Solicitor