After being fired, in my view unfairly, I appealed via my company's
internal complaints procedure. This process took some two and a half
months but was -- not to my surprise, as I anticipated a stitch-up --
ultimately unsuccessful.
For want of having had legal advice, I believed I had three months
from the end of my dealings with the company to lodge a tribunal
application. This I did, filing my application just within the time
limit.
I now understand that I should have lodged my tribunal application
within three months of my termination of employment with the company.
I have a pre-hearing review coming up to determine whether my case can
actually be heard because of this time issue. [There is also the
matter of whether or not I was actually and "employee", but this
appears to me to be a fairly easy hurdle].
Am I done for, I wonder? It was in good faith that I went through the
internal procedure and it struck me as only reasonable that the clock
would start ticking in terms of a tribunal complaint once I had
exhausted possibilities dealing with the company. That is, I took the
date of my receiving a letter confirming "yes, we've listened to you
and you're still fired" as the beginning of the three-month period.
Do I have any hope? Will a tribunal judge view things in, to my mind,
a fair way? It's not as if I waited ages and ages to lodge my
complaint and my understanding of the situation, while wrong, is
hardly unreasonable, is it? Any thoughts would be most gratefully
received.

wrote in message
...
After being fired, in my view unfairly, I appealed via my company's
internal complaints procedure. This process took some two and a half
months but was -- not to my surprise, as I anticipated a stitch-up --
ultimately unsuccessful.
For want of having had legal advice, I believed I had three months
from the end of my dealings with the company to lodge a tribunal
application. This I did, filing my application just within the time
limit.
I now understand that I should have lodged my tribunal application
within three months of my termination of employment with the company.

I understood that the limit had been changed to six months if you had used
the company's internal procedures in the intervening period.

It ought to be described he

http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.uk/

but I cannot find it

I have a pre-hearing review coming up to determine whether my case can
actually be heard because of this time issue. [There is also the
matter of whether or not I was actually and "employee", but this
appears to me to be a fairly easy hurdle].

Whether you are, in fact, an employee or not, is something that the ET are
used to being asked. You do not have to establish this before you can make
a claim (but, of course, your claim will fail if they decide that your
aren't)

tim

I now understand that I should have lodged my tribunal application
within three months of my termination of employment with the company.

I understood that the limit had been changed to six months if you had used
the company's internal procedures in the intervening period.

It ought to be described he

http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.uk/

but I cannot find it

http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.u...ng_a_claim.htm

"Most claims to Employment Tribunals must be made within very strict
time limits. In most cases the tribunal must receive your claim within
three months. This three months begins with the date your employment
ended or when the matter you are complaining about happened. This
means that if it happened on 1 March, the tribunal must receive your
claim on or before 31 May. If it happened on 5 March, the tribunal
must receive your claim on or before 4 June.

In certain circumstances, for example, when you write to your employer
within the original time limit raising a grievance, these limits will
be extended by three months - in other words, in most cases to six
months. The circumstances in which time limits will be extended are
set out in the DTI booklet, 'Resolving disputes: a guide for
employees' http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.u...oyee_guide.pdf
(PDF 46KB)."

HTH

On Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:50:05 +0100, Gorf wrote:

In certain circumstances, for example, when you write to your employer
within the original time limit raising a grievance, these limits will be
extended by three months - in other words, in most cases to six months.
The circumstances in which time limits will be extended are set out in
the DTI booklet, 'Resolving disputes: a guide for employees'
http://www.employmenttribunals.gov.u...oyee_guide.pdf
(PDF 46KB)."

Thats good - when I went through it a few years ago I was lucky to spot a
warning on the web about companies dragging it out to just past the three
month limit in order to catch out the many people who likewise thought it
applied from the end of the internal proceedings not from the event
causing them.

My company did exactly that then smugly told me they hadn't changed their
minds and I could now take them to a tribunal except - 'oh dear - too
late'. They didn't look happy when I said I'd applied a week before the
deadline, just in case...