Casual appointments are temporary appointments to meet short term needs. Casual staff can only be used where there is a genuine management need to employ people for a short period rather than make a permanent appointment. If there is any possibility that staff may be needed for more than 12 months casual Recruitment must not be used. Such short term needs could include covering absences due to extended sick leave or maternity leave or a temporary increase in workload or carrying out project work.
Normal Prison Service policy is that casual staff should be recruited under normal fair and open competition rules whenever possible and that appointments should last no longer than twelve months. The rationale for this being that:-
- where someone is recruited through fair and open competition they can be converted to permanency at any time. Casuals not recruited through fair and open competition cannot be converted to permanent posts without competing through external competition.
- staff employed for longer than 12 months acquire employment rights including the right to claim unfair dismissal. Staff employed for more than a year on a casual contract could claim their were being unfairly dismissed, and seek compensation at an Employment Tribunal, where it can be shown there is a continuing need for staff at the grade within which they had been employed. Where the Tribunal found the member of staff had been unfairly dismissed they could not be employed permanently unless they had secured their appointment through open and fair competition. The Employment Relations Act 1999 increased the maximum compensatory award an Employment Tribunal can make for unfair dismissal to £50,000.
When considering someone for a casual appointment any previous periods of employment as a Civil Servant must be taken into account when calculating the maximum period they can be employed. If someone has already been employed for 12 months or longer with the Prison Service or another Government Department then they could claim continuity of service and the associated employment rights. It is therefore important that recruiters find out whether someone has had any previous periods of service and aggregate them together before a decision is made about the length of time the individual can be employed. Any period of employment without a gap in service will always count as being continuous service. However, where someone has had a gap in service which can clearly be shown to have broken continuity of service then they can be considered for a further casual appointment.
When ending a casual contract, a statutorily compliant dimissal procedure must be used. The minimum satutory procedural requirements are – in summary – that the employer must provide a written statement of the reasons why dismissal is being contemplated, hold a meeting with the employee, and have an appeals process.
Taking account of the above recruiters must decide to appoint either on a
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