Legal News

In an employment claim by Stephen Levine the former general manager of Folkstone’s Leas Cliff Hall, the employment tribunal has ruled that Levine was subjected to unfair dismissal by the venue operator Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) last year.

Levine was dismissed for gross misconduct in March 2012 following 17 years service. He was alleged to have failed to follow the health and safety policy and manage staff correctly.

The Ashford tribunal, employment judge Corrigan in his ruling found that Levine was unfairly dismissed though he acknowledged that Levine had issues in regard to his performance as the manager.
Corrigan said that the complaints against Levine were related to performance and there were no reasonable grounds to consider them to be misconduct and said that dismissal in such issues was beyond the range of reasonable responses.
The performance related matters ATG claimed having led to the dismissal of Levine included gross negligence in relation to the management of health and safety including a failure to clean up pigeon droppings that had accumulated up in the theatre’s undercroft and a failure to manage the venue properly and not having a good working relationship with the staff.
The judge said that these matters were not properly characterised as misconduct and if ATG had been careful in its process there was a possibility that Levine would have been dismissed in any event.
A spokesperson for ATG said that proceedings were yet to be completed and any comment would be inappropriate. The damages in the case have not been determined yet.
Levine meanwhile has hit out at the ATG following the judgment saying that the dwindling audiences to the theatre was due to the increase in booking fees by the company since it took over in 2010.
Prior to 2010, the theatre was managed by Live Nation, with the contract sold on to ATG as part of a £90 million deal to buy all of Live Nation’s UK theatres.
He claimed that when he was the manager there were many great concerts and one nighters and had been ranked as number one concert venue in Kent.
However, it was corporate greed that led to the dwindling numbers he added.
Responding specifically to Levine’s claims about increased ticket charges, an ATG spokesman said the ticketing operation sold tickets on behalf of producers or promoters bringing their shows to its venue most of that income went to them, hence the need to charge for ticketing operations separately.