Civil Service Appeal Board
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You and one other person will be invited to appear before the Board on a date arranged by the Secretariat. You may bring only one person, either representing or supporting you, into the board room for the hearing itself. Additional persons will be refused access to the CSAB office.
The hearing date will, as far as possible, take account of the wishes of both the appellant and the Department/Agency. Hearings generally last for approximately between two and 2½ hours and normally begin at either 10.30 am or 2.30 pm and are held Monday to Thursday inclusive.
You are strongly advised to attend the hearing and to have the assistance of a representative who is familiar with all aspects of the case.
If you are attending the hearing without representation, make sure that you bring all the necessary documents with you and that they have been read thoroughly.
The Department/Agency will be invited to send two representatives to the hearing. One of those will usually be a member of your line management or the person who took the decision to dismiss you. The other is usually from Human Resources. You should, however, note that neither the Board nor you can dictate to the Department/Agency who their representatives should be.
Having decided to appeal you should make every effort to attend the hearing in person. If you do not attend the hearing the Board will consider your case on the written statements submitted by you and the Department/Agency. If you cannot attend but wish your trade union or another person to represent you in your absence you need to provide written confirmation to the Board that your representative is willing to, and has your permission to, proceed in that way.
The hearing will be confidential to the parties concerned and is conducted as informally as possible.
On the day of the hearing it is essential that you and your representative arrive on time as all parties need to be briefed before the hearing begins. In order to do this and to prevent the start of the hearing being delayed we require you to arrive 45 minutes before the start of the hearing. If, on the day of the hearing, you do not arrive within 30 minutes after the time the hearing was scheduled to start and the Board has been given no indication of delay or the reason for non-attendance the hearing will proceed as a paperboard.
You must consider the remedy that you are seeking from the Board before you attend the hearing as you will be asked by a member of the Secretariat during the pre-hearing briefing which remedy you are seeking (i.e. reinstatement, re-engagement or compensation).
At the outset of the hearing the Chair will firstly explain the procedures which the Board will follow and then invite your representative to make a statement on your behalf. You will then be invited to add anything to this statement if you wish to. These oral submissions should collectively amount to no more than 15 minutes. They should briefly explain why you consider the dismissal to have been unfair. However, there is no need to go through the written material in detail as the Board Members will have read the papers in great depth before the hearing. If you do not have a representative the individual who accompanies you may be allowed to go into the board room with you for moral support but will not be allowed to participate in the hearing.
The Board will then question you about your oral and written submission. Whilst the questions are directed to you, you can ask your representative to assist you should you need to. After the questioning the Department/Agency will be given the opportunity to respond and then will be questioned by the Board. Finally you and your representative will be given the chance to make your final submission to the Board. In fairness to the Department/Agency who will not have an opportunity to respond the Board will not normally ask any further questions of you unless perhaps it is a point of clarification. After that the Chair will bring the hearing to a close and all parites will be escorted from the building. The Board will then come to a decision in private.