You have the right to see new evidence against you before you’re dismissed.

The situation

You raise a concern or face an allegation from a colleague, and your employer starts an investigation. The person carrying it out interviews everyone involved and comes back with a measured recommendation: no disciplinary action, just some training and a conversation to smooth things over. Then, without you being told, managers who were never part of the investigation start pushing for a harsher outcome. The allegations grow between the investigation and the disciplinary hearingA formal meeting at which your employer sets out the allegation against you and gives you the opportunity to respond before any decision is made. You have the right to be accompanied by a colleague or.... Nobody shows you the new evidence. Nobody gives you a chance to respond before you're dismissed.

What the tribunal found

The tribunal ruled the dismissal unfair, both in how it was handled and in the decision itself. The investigating officer's first, reasonable conclusion, recommending only mediation and training, was overturned after unrelated managers pressured him to reinterview the complainant and add fresh allegations. The employer never showed the employee that new evidence before the disciplinary hearing, so he had no chance to respond to it. The tribunal also found the hearing should not have been chaired by a manager the employee had reasonably asked to step aside over a perceived bias. Section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996The primary piece of legislation setting out employees rights in the UK, including the right not to be unfairly dismissed, the right to a written statement of employment particulars, and rights relati... sets the test for whether a dismissal is fair. On that test, the tribunal held the employer's finding of misconduct could not be said to rest on reasonable grounds.

If you're facing a disciplinary process and the story keeps shifting, that's worth paying close attention to. An investigation that starts out finding little wrong and then hardens into serious allegations, especially after people who weren't part of the original enquiry get involved, is not automatically fair just because it ends with a formal-looking report.

Seeing the evidence against you is not a courtesy, it's a right, and so is a real chance to respond before any decision gets made. That includes new evidence added after the investigation first concludes. If you asked for a different person to chair your hearing because you had a genuine concern about bias, and that request was refused without good reason, that matters too. So does whether anyone who actually witnessed what happened was ever interviewed.

Not every disciplinary process that changes course is automatically unfair. But if you can see the shape of what happened here in your own case, get advice before your appeal goes ahead. A tribunal will look at who was involved, what evidence you were shown, and whether the process was genuinely independent.