A METEOROLOGIST with the Met Office has received a payout from an employment tribunal because bosses failed to handle his flexible working request appropriately.
Martin Hopwood, an operational meteorologist based at the Met Office's Aberdeen branch, has been awarded more than £1,000 for the failures.
The tribunal heard that managers took over a year to deal with his request to stop working nightshifts, when the law dictates that such requests be dealt with within three months.
Employment judge James Hendry awarded him two weeks’ wages for the breaches – a total of £1,016.
The judge said the Met Office’s handling of the request was “not impressive or what should have happened in an organisation such as the respondents”.
However, the judge rejected Mr Hopwood’s claim that the organisation’s decision to refuse his flexible working request was based on incorrect information.
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The tribunal heard that Mr Hopwood began working with the weather and climate service in May 2012, initially starting out as a trainee forecaster.
He went on to become an operational meteorologist and worked a pattern of shifts, including night shifts of 12.25 hours starting at 7pm.
He was part of the Aberdeen office’s Aviation section, which provides services to airlines and airports.
In April 2018, a change was made to the way staff were paid – moving from a shift allowance for unsociable hours worked to a single lump sum.
A written judgment on the case states: “The result was that any employee such as the claimant and his colleagues would get the same lump sum payment regardless of the actual number of night shifts they worked.
“The new arrangement caused resentment because it was less financially generous than the previous arrangement.”
Mr Hopwood submitted his flexible working request on April 15, 2018, asking to stop working nightshifts.
However, there was no final decision until May 2019.
The judgment stated: “The stark chronology here was that the [request] was submitted on the 15 April 2018, the meeting with Mr Munro and his decision given on the 6 July, the appeal granted 17 October and the reinstituted process concluded on 26 February 2019 followed by a final appeal intimated on 29 May 2019 – more than a year – after the original [request].”
Judge Hendry also found that the Met Office, which works closely with the UK Government, failed to deal with the application reasonably – including telling Mr Hopwood’s colleagues that he had made the request.
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The judgment stated: “There were also other inadequacies in the way the matter was handled which we noted. The canvassing of the claimant’s colleagues for their views on carrying out more nightshifts was a perfectly proper exercise but telling them that he was the colleague who wanted the change was bound to be embarrassing. It should have been kept impersonal.”
The Met Office is the UK’s national meteorological service and generates forecasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
It is a trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), operating on a commercial basis under set targets.
It has approximately 49 sites across the UK, and a further 10 overseas.
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