Judge rules teachers cannot be sacked

Three teachers who had to stop work on health grounds, have failed to win a test case in which they asked to be sacked, to make them eligible for thousands of pounds in severance pay.

The High Court decision was being awaited by more than 100 other sick or incapacitated ex-teachers, who would have been due pay-outs had the trio won their fight to be dismissed from their jobs.

Lawyers for Anne Ridley, from Tyneside, Eunice Verner from Derby and Miranda Shepherd from Norfolk, argued there was a "public law obligation" on their employers to terminate their contracts - even though they had already accepted ill-health retirement benefits.

If the trio had won, they would have been eligible for three months pay in lieu of notice as well as the lump sum payments and pension that went with their retirement.

But after a complex case involving teachers' conditions of employment - known as the Burgundy Book - Mr Justice Lindsay dismissed the three's challenge.

The judge said the "unusual twist" of three teachers seeking a court order forcing their employers to dismiss them was "surprising".

Sick leave

He ruled the teachers' employment had come to an end when they accepted ill-health retirement and there had not been any need for their local authority employers to serve them with dismissal notices.

Anne Ridley was a teacher at the St Thomas More High School in North Shields from November 1974 until 2 October, 2002, when she was granted an ill health pension.

Eunice Verner worked at Becket Primary School in Derby from September 1984 until she was retired on grounds of ill health on 9 July 2002.

Miranda Shepherd was the head teacher of Dickleborough Primary School in Norfolk from September 1996 until she went on sick leave in February 2002.

All three were disputing local authority decisions not to dismiss.

Refusing to order the trio's employers to formally dismiss them, the judge said: "The employers are not under, nor have they been under, an obligation of public law to serve notices of dismissal on the teachers."

However, recognising the "general importance" of the case he granted the three permission to appeal against his decision at the Court of Appeal.