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Guidance notes for officers appealing

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The Appeal Board and what it does

The Board is an independent body and all its Board Members are retired civil servants (apart from the Chairman) who have many years’ experience in dealing with HR management issues. At each hearing, the Board comprises a Chair and two Board Members, one from a panel of retired senior civil servants and the other from a panel of retired senior trade union officials. All are selected on the basis of fair and open competition. The Board decides whether the decision to end your employment was fair. In arriving at their decision the Board looks at four specific areas:

• Procedures – were the procedures followed satisfactorily?
• Substantive issue – was the employee treated fairly and reasonably by the employer?
• Consistency – was anyone else in the same circumstances treated differently?
• Proportionality – did the situation warrant the penalty of dismissal?

Further details of these four areas can be found in the attached note “Dismissals in the Civil Service - Good Practice Principles Applied by the Civil Service Appeal Board”.

The remit of the Board is not to substitute its judgement for that of the Department/Agency nor does it have any locus to hear appeals from civil servants who wish to appeal against decisions on medical retirement.