Judgment approved by the court Vaultex UK Ltd v Bialas HIS HONOUR JUDGE AUERBACH: Introduction 1. We will refer to the parties as they were in the employment tribunal. The respondent is a large firm which conducts cash processing. The claimant was employed by it as a Super Operator/Coin Processor. He was dismissed in October 2021 for the given reason of his conduct in respect of a posting which he put on the company intranet. The claimant’s claim of unfair dismissal was heard by Employment Judge Knight sitting at East London. The tribunal upheld the claim, but directed that the basic and compensatory awards be reduced by 25% on account of the same conduct for which the claimant had been dismissed. 2. This is the respondent’s appeal against the decision upholding the claim of unfair dismissal. In the tribunal, the claimant represented himself and the respondent was represented by a solicitor. At the appeal hearing today, Ms Clarke of counsel has represented the respondent and the claimant has again represented himself. 3. In its written reasons, after some preliminaries in which the tribunal identified that it heard evidence from the claimant and the manager who dismissed him, Mr Babbage, the tribunal set out its self-direction as to the law. This included the relevant parts of section 98 Employment Rights Act 1996 and a summary of the guidance relating to cases in which the reason or principal reason for dismissal has been found to be conduct in British Home Stores v Burchell [1980] ICR 303. The tribunal also directed itself, citing pertinent authority, that, in relation to sanction, a band of reasonable responses approach should be applied, and that the tribunal “must not simply substitute its judgment for that of the employer in this case”. 4. In this case, as we will describe, the tribunal found that the claimant was dismissed for his conduct in relation to the intranet post, but it ultimately concluded that the sanction of dismissal was outside the band of reasonable responses and for that reason found the dismissal to be unfair. However, © EAT 2024 Page 3 [2024] EAT 19