In person For the v Mr C Roydon, Director — 2025

The two claimants, husband and wife, were employed as the two supervisors of a small commercial laundry business in Cornwall. In early 2024 the respondent's major customer (Sykes Cottages, accounting for around 85% of turnover) gave two weeks' notice to terminate its contract, and the respondent's directors decided to dismiss the claimants by reason of redundancy. The claimants were called in on 4 March 2024 and told their employment was terminated immediately; they were paid notice and accrued holiday pay but not their statutory redundancy pay.

The Tribunal found that the statutory definition of redundancy in section 139 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 was met and that each claimant was entitled to a statutory redundancy payment of £1,644.21. Applying section 98(4), the Tribunal found that the dismissals were unfair because there was a complete absence of any effective consultation process; the decision to dismiss summarily was not within the band of reasonable responses, even bearing in mind the respondent's size and the immediate business difficulty.

Applying Polkey, the Tribunal found that a fair consultation could have been completed within around three weeks and that the claimants would in any event have been fairly dismissed by reason of redundancy at the end of that period. No basic award was made because the claimants received a statutory redundancy payment. Each claimant was awarded a compensatory award of £1,816.76, comprising £500 for loss of statutory rights and three weeks' net pay of £1,316.76 to reflect the lost consultation period. The Recoupment Regulations did not apply.