Mr Martin Jackson, Citizens’ Advice Cornwall For the First v Secretary of State for Business, Energy and 2 others — 2020

This was a claim by Mrs N Abrahams and 24 others for a protective award arising out of collective redundancy consultation at Cornwall Food Foundation Limited. The Employment Judge sat alone at Plymouth on 20 November 2020 and recorded that the second respondent, Cornwall Food Foundation Limited, had entered voluntary creditors’ liquidation on 8 January 2020. The company employed 26 people at its premises at The Old Granary, Malpas Road, Truro.

The tribunal found that at a meeting on 12 December 2019 the claimants were told that both Fifteen and Cornwall Food Foundation had ceased trading with immediate effect and that all staff were to be made redundant immediately, save for a handful retained until 19 December 2019 to assist the insolvency practitioners. It found there was no independent recognised trade union and no staff association or other elected employee representative body. It also found that the respondent failed to undertake any, or any adequate, consultation with the claimants before the dismissals.

The judge set out the relevant provisions of s.188 TULRCA 1992, including the duty to consult where an employer proposes to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment within 90 days or less, the timing requirement in s.188(1A), the requirement to consult appropriate representatives under s.188(1B), and the duty in s.188(2) to consult about ways of avoiding, reducing and mitigating dismissals. On the facts found, the tribunal concluded that the second respondent failed to comply with the statutory requirement and that a protective award should be made.

The judgment states that the protected period was 90 days beginning on 12 December 2019 and that each relevant employee was entitled to an award in respect of 90 days, irrespective of the date on which employment ended. The judgment does not record a separate monetary sum in the extracted text.