Postman who got the sack over undelivered mail to have second hearing of his unfair dismissal claim

Senior judges in Belfast quashed an industrial tribunal’s decision to reject Robert Colhoun’s unfair dismissal claim and ordered a rehearing of his case.

Mr Justice O’Hara also identified clear failings at a supervisory level where Mr Colhoun’s line managers went unpunished.He said: “This is not a case where there is any suggestion that the appellant was not working diligently.

“To put it colloquially, there is no suggestion that he was skiving whether by sitting at home or taking prolonged breaks or anything of that nature.”

Mr Colhoun worked for Royal Mail for 15 years with a blemish-free disciplinary record until his sacking for gross misconduct in April 2021.

Employed on a part-time contract, his role involved covering delivery and collecting duties when another postman or woman was on annual leave.

During a week in March 2021 his workload included delivering three ‘Door-2-Door’ contracts - unaddressed mail featuring advertisements from businesses which provides a revenue stream for Royal Mail.

Mr Colhoun failed to deliver any mail in those contracts that week, citing the extra pressures of an extremely challenging workload.

He informed no-one at that stage, but later told his boss that he “just ran out of time”.

Mr Colhoun also argued that the management team at the delivery office were partially to blame as they should have identified that the contracts had not been fulfilled.

Following a period spent suspended from duty he was dismissed with immediate effect.

He took a case to an industrial tribunal, contending that his sacking was excessive and disproportionate to the very limited wrongdoing.

The Tribunal rejected his claim after finding that he was an experienced postman who had not completed a fundamental part of his role and could have gone to a manager with any concerns about his workload.

However, the Court of Appeal held there had been a lack of fairness in the treatment of employees.

Acknowledging that the postman should have said he was under too much pressure to complete the Door-2-Door contracts, Mr Justice O’Hara insisted his bosses should also have noticed the mail was going undelivered.

“One way of interpreting this is that while the appellant was busy on the job (if not on the full job) his line managers were asleep on (part of) their job,” the judge said.

“Yet it was the appellant who was sacked summarily while the line managers went entirely unpunished.”

He described the Tribunal’s decision to back Royal Mail’s sacking of Mr Colhoun as “perverse”

The judge declared: “It appears to us that the decision to dismiss was a gross over reaction to the appellant’s very limited wrongdoing.”

Quashing the finding reached by the Tribunal, he remitted the case to a freshly constituted panel.

Mr Justice O’Hara added: “It is the view of this court that no tribunal could reasonably reach the conclusion that this dismissal was fair.

“The focus by the respondent (Royal Mail) and then by the Tribunal on the conduct of appellant to the total exclusion of clear failings at supervisory level elsewhere in the organisation was a fundamental error which renders the dismissal unfair.”