CUB-01-93
SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER’S DECISION
18th FEBRUARY 1993
COMMITTEE ROOM 4, 3RD FLOOR, GOVERNMENT OFFICES, BUCKS ROAD, DOUGLAS
DENIS ALFRED COLQUITT
(Adjudication Officer)
Appellant
-vMR A
Respondent
This is an appeal by the adjudication officer against a decision of the Social Security Appeal
Tribunal allowing Mr A‟s appeal against the adjudication officer‟s disqualification of Mr A‟s claim to
unemployment benefit.
At all material times prior to the 22nd March 1992, Mr A had been employed as a police officer by
the Thames Valley Police. He reached the rank of Sergeant. He completed thirty years service
and on the said date terminated his employment.
Though he was perfectly entitled to terminate his employment as he did, Mr A was not obliged to
do so. He could have continued until he attained 55 years of age, which, I understand, he will
attain in December 1998. His employers at one point said that Mr A had “resigned – 30 years
service”. Mr A countered “I did not „resign‟ …. I retired as I had completed a full 30 years service
as required by my terms of service.” He added to this, “It was not early retirement. It is normal
and expected that officers retire on completion of 30 years service.” He said that he could not
enhance his pension any further, but would have to continue his contributions to the fund for no
return. Mr A wrote in a submission “It is expected that officers of junior rank retire on completion
of 30 years service. In the year prior to my retirement the Thames Valley Police undertook a
major restructuring. As I was due to retire I was not included in this change and it was made
clear to me by my immediate supervisors that there was no place for me in the revised force.”
Later he said, referring to an authority upon which Mr Colquitt relies, “conditions under which
junior ranks (serve) in the police force (have) altered greatly since 1970 and it is very much a
young man‟s „game‟.”
Neither Mr A nor his wife have family connections with the Isle of Man. Mr A had holidayed here
regularly since the mid 1960‟s and, planning for his retirement, bought a house here in 1987. The
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employment situation on the Island was then easier, he said, than following his retirement in
1992.
Between August, 1991, and his retirement Mr A made numerous applications for employment on
the Island and registered with an employment agency in Douglas. He was advised by retired
police officers on the Island that it would be necessary for him to be resident on the Island before
he would secure employment.
Mr A‟s house in England was owned by his employers.
He would have had to vacate it on
retirement. He accepted that he would be able to (and did) negotiate to remain in it for a time,
but said that after a week or two he would be obliged to pay a full commercial rent. He felt,
therefore, that owning a house on the Island, he had no choice but to move here and that there
was no point in seeking employment elsewhere.
At the date of his retirement Mr A had not been successful in finding employment on the Island.
Apart from the difficulties he had encountered in trying to find employment on the Island from
Oxfordshire while still with the police force, there were further problems created by the Island‟s
work permit legislation.
Immediately upon his retirement Mr A applied for unemployment benefit. The Adjudication Officer
in Reading considered the matter and on the 2nd July, 1992, notified his decision that Mr A was
disqualified for such benefit for twelve weeks from the 23rd March to the 13th June 1992, because
he voluntarily left his employment without just cause. By undated letter from his address in Laxey
and received by the Isle of Man D.H.S.S. Head Office on the 6th August 1992, Mr A appealed
against that disqualification. By virtue of the reciprocal arrangements that appeal fell to by heard
by the Appeal Tribunal on the Island and it was so heard on the 28th October 1992.
My Appellant‟s, Mr Colquitt‟s, case throughout has been that his opposite number in Reading made
the correct decision; that it was inescapable that Mr A had left his employment voluntarily; that in
a number of like decided Commissioner‟s cases dating from 1951 to 1987 applicants had been
held to have left employment voluntarily without just cause; that the factors concerning Mr A‟s
attempts to find other work before retiring, his move to the Isle of Man and the work permit
question were matters to be taken into account when assessing the period of disqualification;
allowance had been made for them by reducing the period in this case from the maximum of
twenty-six weeks to twelve weeks.
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The Appeal Tribunal found unanimously for Mr A and recorded “We feel that in view of the
difficulties in obtaining employment in the Isle of Man that this case can be distinguished from the
case law cited to us and in view of the added difficulties there were in obtaining work in the Isle of
Man e.g. having to obtain a work permit that notwithstanding the previous decision quoted to us
that the appellant did have just cause for leaving his employment in the manner in which he did
and that his doing so did not amount to leaving without just cause.”
The Appeal Tribunal Chairman on the 6th January 1993, gave to Mr Colquitt leave to bring this
appeal to me. Mr Colquitt‟s grounds of appeal read “that the decision reached by the Appeal
Tribunal in this case is wrong in law and contrary to that established by previous Commissioners‟
cases and that the decision if upheld could set a precedent for other similar cases.”
I may say without more that the second limb of those grounds is distinctly unimpressive as a
matter of appeal. If the Tribunal‟s decision is correct it will be equally correct to uphold it and
equally correct to use it as a precedent for like cases. If the consequences thereof are unpalatable
it is the law and not the decision that should be changed.
The law cited to me was in the Commissioners‟ Decisions, R(u) 26/51, R(u) 20/64, R(u) 4/70, R(u)
3/81, and R(u) 4/87. R(u) 3/81 was the subject of an appeal to the Court of Appeal in England
and that appeal is reported as Crewe and others v Social Security Commissioner [1982]2 All E.R.
745. Lord Denning, M.R., in the course of his judgment reviewed too the other decisions which
were cited to me. The Statutory provision in question is Section 20 (1) (a) of the Social Security
Act, 1975, which reads “A person shall be disqualified for receiving unemployment benefit for such
period not exceeding 26 weeks as may be determined …… if he …… has voluntarily left (his
employment as an employed earner) without just cause.”
It is, I think, not arguable that Mr A did not voluntarily leave his employment as an employed
earner. Mr A has contended that he was expected to leave, but has accepted that it was open to
him to stay in the police force until he reached 55 years of age. He chose to leave; that is not
really in dispute any more than in the cited cases and decisions.
He chose to leave without
alternative employment, with a pension, of which he commuted the maximum permissible; he
chose to come to live on the Island and must be taken to have been aware of the work permit
law.
The matter turns around what is “just cause.”
The principle which emerges from the
authorities is that there can be no hard and fast rule. Each case must be considered on its own
facts and merits. Lord Denning sets out at pages 747 and 749 the approach of the Commissioners
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over the years and then advances these propositions. “(1) When a man voluntarily leaves his
employment, he is disqualified from receiving unemployment benefit for (twenty-six) weeks,
unless he proves, and the burden is on him to prove, that he had „just cause‟ for leaving his
employment. (2) It is not sufficient for him to prove that he was quite reasonable in leave his
employment.
Reasonableness may be „good cause,‟ but it is not necessarily „just cause.‟ (3)
„Without just cause‟ means without any just cause for throwing on to the unemployment fund the
payment of unemployment benefit. If he voluntarily retires on pension, he is getting a substantial
financial benefit for himself, and it is not fair or just to the unemployment fund that he should also
get unemployment benefit for the (twenty-six) weeks.”
I accept those propositions. I find that Mr A has not discharged the burden upon him. I find that
his case cannot be distinguished in the way in which the Appeal Tribunal sought to distinguish it.
I find that the Appeal Tribunal erred in law and I quash its decision. I restore the decision of the
adjudication officer that Mr A be disqualified for twelve weeks.
Appeal allowed.
3rd March 1993
A K Williamson
DEPUTY HIGH BAILIFF
DEPUTY SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER
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