Miss Sarah Loffman v Ladybird Day Nurseries Ltd t/a Ladybird Nursery Heard: Remotely (by Cloud Video Platform) – Midlands West — 2020

Miss Sarah Loffman had worked as a nursery nurse for Ladybird Day Nurseries Ltd t/a Ladybird Nursery since 22 June 2015 under a contract dated 3 April 2019. After the respondent's emails of 18 and 19 March 2020 about the nursery closing because of Covid-19, she received a letter on 26 March 2020 stating that she would be laid off with effect from 27 March 2020. The tribunal found that the contract did not contain a right to lay off, that the employment ended on 27 March 2020, and that the respondent did not attend the hearing after its responses were struck out.

The tribunal held that the dismissal was by reason of redundancy within s.139(1)(a) ERA 1996 because the respondent had closed the business as a result of the first Covid-19 lockdown. The unfair dismissal claim succeeded because there had been no warning, consultation, notice, pool, selection exercise, or consideration of alternatives such as furlough. The tribunal recorded that redundancy was a potentially fair reason, but the dismissal was unfair in the circumstances, and it made no Polkey reduction. It also found that the claimant reasonably declined a zero-hours role offered at the end of May or beginning of June 2020 and did not reduce her loss for that reason.

On remedy for unfair dismissal, the claimant received a statutory redundancy payment of £1,384.96 based on four weeks at £346.24 per week, and no separate basic award was payable because it was extinguished by the redundancy payment. The compensatory award was £4,912.18, made up of £4,282.18 for post-notice loss, £105 for lost pension contributions, and £525 for loss of statutory rights. The tribunal stated that the prescribed element for the Recoupment of Benefits Regulations was £4,282.18, covering 25 April 2020 to 4 April 2022, with an excess of £630.

The breach of contract claim succeeded because the claimant was entitled to four weeks' notice and was dismissed without effective notice. Damages were £1,384.96 gross for notice pay plus £30 for pension contributions during the notice period. The unlawful deduction from wages claim also succeeded: the respondent had not paid in lieu of 5.7 days of accrued but untaken annual leave, and the tribunal awarded £374.37 gross, subject to tax and employee national insurance. The total award was £8,086.47.