Fr Stavros Bozos was the priest of the Greek Orthodox parish of the Three Hierarchs in Leeds, seconded from the Church of Greece and under the authority of the Archbishop of Great Britain and Thyateira. His contract of employment included celebrating the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and Great Feast Days and monthly at the Greek School, preaching at the Liturgy, catechism classes for children and adults, helping and supporting the community and church and taking care of the “cleanness and seemly appearance of the Church interior” [15].

He had refused to work from the church after the COVID-19 lockdowns were lifted, insisting on working from home and arguing that he should not be obliged to commute to the church because the community’s computer was located at his home, making the commute a waste of time [18]. The diocese raised concerns about his lack of availability, particularly his failure to provide regular catechism classes at the Greek school [17], and accused him of being uncooperative and defensive during meetings where concerns were raised about his performance. In June 2022, he was transferred to the Orthodox community in Hull [28]. Shortly afterwards, he was suspended by the Archbishop altogether [30] and the Hull community so informed [32] – in effect, he was dismissed.

In Reverend S Bozos v Greek Orthodox Community of Leeds [2023] UKET 1805572/2022, Fr Bozos claimed that he had been unfairly dismissed. At a preliminary hearing in November 2023, the parish had claimed that Fr Bozos had been employed by the Church of Greece on secondment to Leeds rather than by the Greek Orthodox Community of Leeds itself, but Employment Judge Bright held that he had, in fact, been employed by the Leeds community. Before the later hearing, the parish admitted that Fr Bozos had been unfairly dismissed and that no proper dismissal procedure had been followed “because the respondent did not appreciate that it was his employer” [49]. The issues to be determined in the unfair dismissal complaint, therefore, related to remedy only.

The parish conceded that Fr Bozos was entitled to a basic award and agreed the amount claimed as £2,232.67, calculated on the basis of three years’ service x 1.5 (age-related factor) x weekly gross salary of £496.15 [50]. The central issue was what financial losses the dismissal had caused Fr Bozos, under s.123 Employment Rights Act 1996 (“the compensatory award”). He claimed a loss of salary for a period of twelve months from his dismissal of £21,206.88, plus employer’s pension contributions (unconfirmed) and £500 loss of statutory rights [51]. The parish countered that he should not be entitled to any compensatory award on two counts: that he would have been fairly dismissed in any event had a fair procedure been followed under the heading “or for some other reason” and/or that he did not take reasonable steps to replace his lost earnings during the period September 2022 to October 2023 (“failure to mitigate”) [52].

Employment Judge Bright held that the parish had a fair reason for dismissal for “some other substantial reason”:

“The unique nature of the relationship between a community … and its priest is such that the breakdown of that relationship to the level displayed in the evidence before me could only result in a total rupture of the relationship. It was this that lay at the heart of the respondent’s expression of wishes to the Archbishop that the claimant’s assignment to the respondent be terminated. In my judgment, the respondent therefore had a fair reason for dismissal, under section 98(1) ERA, for ‘some other substantial reason of a kind such as to justify the dismissal of an employee holding the position which the employee held’, being the breakdown of the unique relationship between priest and community” [53].

The Leeds community had had reasonable grounds for believing the relationship to have broken down [54], and Fr Bozos was not, therefore, entitled to damages for wrongful dismissal “because he was not wrongfully dismissed” [65].