A college lecturer who felt forced to resign after he complained about inadequate resources and frequent flooding that pooled around electrical equipment has been awarded more than £44,000 for constructive dismissal.
Mr Hope, who was an art and design lecturer at City and Islington College in London, reported several issues to his employer, Capital City College Group. An employment tribunal heard his concerns were not dealt with effectively and ultimately contributed to his decision to leave the job.
Hope emailed a technician, “RT”, numerous times about a lack of resources and PPE, which were then escalated to RT’s manager. He complained that the college had failed to provide PPE for heavy-duty equipment, such as safety goggles and welding masks, as well as art materials for students.
Constructive dismissal
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RT and Hope each individually raised grievances about one another in 2020, and Hope complained that his grievance was not handled adequately by the organisation.
The room he regularly taught in was affected by flooding in 2018, 2019 and on several occasions in 2021. He considered further flooding in August 2021 as the last straw and left his job in October that year.
The college had tried to rectify the issues that resulted in the flooding, but ultimately the repairs would have been significantly costly.
The tribunal found that the organisation had failed to deal with Hope’s grievance, saying it had taken too long to investigate.
The judgment says: “Both the flooding and the relationship with RT were each an effective cause of his resignation. It follows that the grievance failure, being so concerned with these, was an effective cause of his resignation.
“Having found above that the grievance failure was a repudiatory breach and an effective cause of his resignation it follows that the claimant has established that he was constructively dismissed.”
“The acts of failing to provide resources, PPE and the welding room together with a singular lack of impact on RT’s performance were extremely frustrating for the claimant. These acts caused him to be confronted regularly with the anger and disappointment of the students through no fault on his own, which must have been highly stressful. The grievance failure, which was about all of these (and flooding), intensified his feelings of helplessness.”
The tribunal rejected his unfair dismissal claim.
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He was awarded £44,400 in compensation, including awards for loss of earnings and pension.
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