Judgment approved by the court Vaultex UK Ltd v Bialas matter referred to only came out in evidence at the tribunal hearing. The burden of this paragraph appears to be, therefore, to rule out something that the respondent could not rely upon in support of its case that dismissal was within the band of reasonable responses. But the substantive question for the tribunal still remained, as to whether the fact of the claimant’s long and unblemished service – around ten years or more at the time of dismissal – itself meant that it was not reasonably open to the respondent to dismiss for this conduct. 58. As to that, we make two points. First, once again, this is not a case where the tribunal found that there was unfairness because a relevant circumstance was not considered by the employer at all. To the contrary, the tribunal specifically found that the claimant’s long service and the fact that this was a first offence were taken into account by the respondent. 59. Secondly, given that the tribunal found – see [24] – that the respondent’s policies and procedures made it clear that conduct of this sort was considered to be potentially so serious that it could result in dismissal for a first offence, and, indeed, that they explained that, even if not directed at another employee, such conduct might amount to discriminatory harassment of colleagues exposed to it, and that this post was placed on an intranet used by the entire workforce, we do not think that it was reasonably open to the tribunal to conclude, if it did, that the claimant’s prior clean record of long service meant that dismissal was outside of the reasonable band. 60. We turn to the fourth and final reason given by the tribunal at [56]. This relates, again, to the question of the claimant’s state of mind when he put up the post. The correct starting point, we reiterate, was what the tribunal found as fact that Mr Babbage thought about the claimant’s state of mind, and how what Mr Babbage thought about that influenced the decision to dismiss. The tribunal again gave itself a correct self-direction in its summary of the law on this point, referring to the formulation in Beatt v Croydon Health Services NHS Trust [2017] EWCA Civ 401; [2017] ICR 1240. It also did earlier make findings of fact about what Mr Babbage thought, including what he thought about the © EAT 2024 Page 21 [2024] EAT 19