Section 98A(1) of the Employment Act 1996 means that, where one of the statutory dismissal and disciplinary procedures applies to a dismissal, and the employer fails to follow it, the dismissal will be unfair.¹

S98A, however, only applies to the statutory procedures laid out in the Employment Act 2002. A common confusion is to think that it applies to any statutory rule relating to a dismissal procedure. For example, the right to be accompanied to a disciplinary proceeding is a statutory right, but it is not part of the Employment Act 2002 procedure. Therefore, a breach of that right will not make a dismissal automatically unfair.

1. Provided that the employee is eligible to claim unfair dismissal to begin with