Mr D Taylor and 11 Others Mr A Smart and 28 Others v Complete Utilities Limited and 1 other — 2023

These were claims for a protective award under section 188 TULRCA 1992 arising from mass redundancies at Complete Utilities Limited after the company went into administration on 11 November 2021. The claimants said collective consultation should have begun by 27 September 2021, that no employee representatives were elected, and that there had been no meaningful consultation before dismissal.

The tribunal accepted that CU had long-running cash-flow problems connected to its work for Gigaclear, but it found that the decisive event was the failure to receive the full expected payment at the end of October 2021. It accepted evidence that the directors genuinely believed the business could continue if that payment arrived in full, and held that there was no proposal to dismiss for redundancy until it became clear that the full payment would not be made. The tribunal also noted that a letter dated 5 November 2021 said consultation was being opened, but by then the financial position had already been fixed.

Applying the special circumstances exception and the duty in section 189(6) to take all such steps towards compliance as were reasonably practicable, the tribunal held that the late shortfall was unexpected in the context of the parties' previous trading and amounted to special circumstances. It found that those circumstances made full compliance with the consultation duties not reasonably practicable and that any further consultation would not have had a material effect on the dismissals. All protective award claims were therefore dismissed.