Suffolk County Council
Fire Service
Thompsons Solicitors
Congress House
Great Russell street
LONDON
WC1B 3LW
CDJ/FBU/F98/60224
SAS/SIS
SA Smith
01473 588939
5th May 1999
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for your letter of 22nd April 1999.
I have to say that I am disappointed at the tone and tenor of your letter. Indeed in your very first paragraph you suggest, wrongly, that the Suffolk Fire Service treats FBU representatives in a less than fair manner. The implication is that the Brigade has meted out unfair treatment to an FBU representative on an earlier occasion. If this is a reference to a recent disciplinary hearing of a member of the Brigade, who happened also to be an FBU representative, you will no doubt recollect that the particular hearing was before an elected member panel which found two of three charges proven and imposed serious disciplinary awards.
I disagree with your view on whether the Chief Fire Officer, Mr Alcock, should hear the discipline charges against Mr Hyde. I, as Deputy Chief Fire Officer, have dealt with Mr Hyde’s grievance. Mr Alcock has not involved himself in the grievance, despite correspondence having being addressed to him. I therefore see no reason why Mr Alcock should not sit on the hearing of the disciplinary charges.
You appear in your letter to have some difficulty with the Brigade’s interpretation of paragraph 12, page 4, of the grievance Procedures. In my view the wording of paragraph 12 has a quite different meaning from the one that you would choose to place upon it.
Your client was advised on 19 January 1999 that he would revert to firefighter rank as of 1 February 1999.
Your client lodged a grievance on 29 Janaury 1999. However, at the time of lodging the grievance your client had been advised as to what would happen; in effect there were conditions existing at the time of registration of the grievance that Mr Hyde would revert to his firefighter rank. Paragraph 12 requires some careful scrutiny. The way you interpret the paragraph cannot be correct. The term "status quo" is perhaps a misleading way of describing the paragraph. Those words do not appear within it. In a disciplined service the way you have interpreted paragraph 12 would be a total nonsense. It would effectively mean that any member of the Brigade who, at any time, took a dislike to any instruction or order that he was given, could invoke the grievance procedure and thereby avoid compliance, at least for the time being, with an order. This would mean at its worst that, in a disciplined service, one would have to run the Brigade by consent.
The only sensible construction that can be put on paragraph 12 in the context of a uniformed and disciplined service, and I have to say if one also pays close heed to the exact words of paragraph 12, is as follows. It is the conditions existing "prior to the registration of the grievance" which will continue. In the present case, at that time Mr Hyde was subject of a condition, or state of affairs, that would see him revert at 1 February 1999 to firefighter rank. Immediately prior to registration he was going to revert: that is what happened; that, in my view, was entirely proper.
You will therefore appreciate that I find your interpretation of paragraph 12 unsustainable in the context of a disciplined service.
You will be quick, no doubt, to appreciate that your interpretation would be capable of undermining Brigade discipline and further capable of abuse by those seeking to undermine the operation of the Brigade.
Further, I do not accept that the way in which the Brigade interpreted paragraph 12 was a breach of Mr Hyde’s contract. It is a separate point, as you are aware, which led to the decision as to why Mr hyde should be paid for loss of pay.
In the final paragraph of page 2 of your letter you state that this is the second time you have seen Suffolk Fire Service react to a grievance by the use of Discipline Regulations. I put on record that in my view this is total speculation on your part. Your suggestion is that discipline proceedings are brought for an improper motive. Reference to the other case that you are no doubt referring to ended in two charges proven and awards given by an elected member tribunal.
I note that you consider that the matter of your client’s grievance should proceed to the stage 4.1.12. on 22 February 1999 your client’s memo of 20 February 1999 was received, in which he advised he wished to proceed to the next stage of the grievance mechanism. On 1 march 1999 my secretary contacted your client to discuss dates for the grievance hearing. Mr Hyde supplied dates and a contact telephone number. Mr Hyde gave no indication then that he wished to proceed to the next stage of the grievance procedure.
It became clear to my secretary after checking my diary that a hearing in March would not be possible on the availability dates supplied. After numerous failed attempts to contact Mr Hyde between 3 March and 4 March, a letter was sent to Mr Hyde on 9 March offering dates in April. Why was it the case that your client supplied availability dates on 1 March 1999 when it appears that on 28 February 199 he wrote a memo asking to proceed to the next stage? Further, on 6 March 1999 when your client wrote to the Chief Executive, no mention was made that dates were being looked at to have the grievance hearing before myself heard. The conversation with my secretary and the impression conveyed to her and the memo of 28 February 1999 are clearly at odds with each other. To be even more precise, the memo of 28th February 1999 was not received at these headquarters until some time after it was written. The first knowledge we had of its existence was on 16 march 1999 when a copy of it was appended to a fax sent to me by Mr Hyde. In my view the discussion your client entered into over dates indicated a clear mutuality of agreement to extend time limits and, as I have already expressed in my letter of 19 March 1999, I find your client’s conduct in this regard to be disingenuous to say the least.
I have no wish to enter into any idle speculation as to what was in your client’s mind when he initiated the County Court action.
I correct the position as stated by you regarding the County Court action. Your client was advised in a letter from the County Secretary and solicitor dated 18 March 1999 that in view of the willingness of the Brigade to settle the case, the sensible course of action would be for Mr Hyde to agree to withdraw his claim against Mr Alcock personally upon the basis of admission of liability by Suffolk County Council. Upon receiving written notification of withdrawal of the claim, the County Secretary and Solicitor would advise payment of the sum sought, and as described in the letter, to your client. If Mr Hyde has not yet received any payment it will be because he has not complied with what was discussed with the County secretary and Solicitor. I understand that the County Secretary and Solicitor is now responding to your letter of 23 April and that this matter should shortly be resolved.
I note your comments in the final paragraph on page 3 of your letter. The Brigade is, of course, free to serve discipline papers on one of its officers at any time. I agree it is unfortunate if one has one’s personal possessions tampered with and I note that your complaint has been passed to the Chief Executive to have the matter considered. However, I also take the view that one must take personal responsibility for safeguarding one’s personal and confidential possessions; the prime responsibility for ensuring that lies with the individual.
I note your comments in the final page of your letter. They are, of course, points that Mr Hyde may wish to make in his defence of the discipline charges with which he has been served. It is for the body that conducts the discipline hearing to determine whether the discipline charges are proven, taking into account all the circumstances of the case.
I utterly refute the conclusion that your reach in the final sentence of the large paragraph of page 4 of your letter.
In conclusion, the discipline proceedings must take their course and I see no reason to intervene in that process. However, in view of Mr Hyde’s quite clear desire to have the grievance proceed to an elected member hearing I am requesting the County Director of Personnel to arrange a grievance hearing as soon as possible.
If I have not responded to any specific point within your letter it does not necessarily mean that I accept your client’s version of events or indeed his view of a particular situation.
Yours faithfully
S A Smith
Deputy Chief Fire Officer
