Employment

Authority established that time limits in the context of unfair dismissal claims went to jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction could not be conferred on a tribunal by agreement or waiver. The question of jurisdiction had to be taken by a tribunal if it considered that the issue was a properly live one. It was true that a tribunal could not exercise jurisdiction by concession and equally, in an appropriate case, the tribunal would be obliged to raise the issue of jurisdiction even though it had not been identified by the employers.

Tribunals properly had to guard against exercising a jurisdiction when the statutory conditions were not met. But they were not bloodhounds who had to sniff out potential grounds on which jurisdiction could be refused. If the parties agreed that a particular claimant was an employee, for example, then there would have to be good reason for the tribunal to doubt that that was the case and to require a preliminary hearing to investigate