(1) Mr D Pointon (2) Mr D Cooper (3) Miss J Thursfield (4) Mr S Allred v Swift Electrical Wholesalers (S-O-T) Limited FINAL HEARING — 2022

The respondent made redundancies in June 2020 after the first Covid-related lockdown. The tribunal heard the four claims together and held that all four claimants were unfairly dismissed, but that the reason for dismissal in every case was redundancy. Because the reason was redundancy, the tribunal said no basic awards were payable.

The tribunal found the process was rushed and did not amount to meaningful consultation. Warning letters went out on 11 June 2020, provisional selection letters on 16 June 2020, and consultation meetings on 19 June 2020. By then the selection scores had already been fixed, the claimants had not been given a real chance to comment on the scoring system, and the tribunal found there had been no adequate consideration of voluntary redundancy, furlough, or job-sharing as alternatives. The tribunal applied section 98(4) ERA 1996, the band of reasonable responses approach, and the Polkey principle.

In Mr Cooper's case, the tribunal accepted that the warehouse headcount fell from five to four and that the dismissal was for redundancy, but it found the dismissal unfair because flexible furlough was not properly considered and because the scoring system made length of service decisive. Warehouse workers with under five years' service were effectively certain to be selected, and Mr Cooper was the only warehouse worker in that category. The tribunal assessed Mr Cooper as having an 80 percent chance of returning to work on 6 July 2020, a 20 percent chance of remaining on furlough until 19 July 2020, and then returning full time from 20 July 2020, so any compensatory award would be reduced on that basis.

In Mr Pointon and Mr Allred's cases, the tribunal again accepted redundancy as the reason for dismissal, but found unfairness in the same rushed process and in the drivers' selection criteria. The length-of-service criterion was given decisive weight, the flexible-approach criterion was too subjective, and the tribunal found the scoring did not match the respondent's stated focus on role requirements. For Polkey, it assessed Mr Pointon at about a 40 percent chance of keeping his job, leading to a 60 percent reduction, and Mr Allred at about a 25 percent chance, leading to a 75 percent reduction.

In Miss Thursfield's case, the tribunal rejected her suggestion that the scores had been manipulated because of a personal dislike, and it accepted that Miss Lewis scored her in good faith. The dismissal was still unfair because of the same rushed process and because the disciplinary-record criterion was scored unfairly: she had no unspent disciplinary sanction, yet received the lowest mark. However, the tribunal held that her score was so far below the others that correcting the defects would not have changed the outcome, and it considered that a nil compensatory award would be appropriate under Polkey.