The court held that, although it might generally be desirable for attendance management to be handled by way of non-contractual policy, there was nothing to prevent a particular provision in a section of the employee handbook concerning ‘trigger points’ from being incorporated into the contract of employment, where the introductory words to that section had a distinct flavour of contractual incorporation, and it had been the intention of the employer and the trade unions that the provisions of that section would be incorporated where it was apt to do so.
Mathew Purchase was involved in this case.