Ms S Tyler v Priory Central Services Ltd — 2020

Ms Tyler was employed as Interior Design and Projects Manager from January 2019, later given a contractual variation and a director title, but the tribunal found her substantive work continued to be interior design project work. In 2019 Priory Central Services reorganised its estates function because the volume of major projects was falling, merged teams, and created a new Interior Designer role at lower pay. The respondent treated Ms Tyler as at risk of redundancy, consulted with her, and then ran a competitive interview process for the new role, which she did not win.

The tribunal held that the respondent had not proved a redundancy situation under section 139 ERA 1996. It found that the requirement for employees to carry out work of the kind Ms Tyler did had not ceased or diminished: the interior design function remained, the respondent continued to need someone to lead that work, to contribute to budgeting, and to manage consultant interior designers, and contractors continued to be used until February 2020. The tribunal preferred the claimant's evidence on the practical reality of the role and found that the respondent had decided the role was redundant without properly examining her job description, her actual day-to-day work, or the project data.

The tribunal accepted that the business reorganisation had a sound commercial rationale and considered the SOSR alternative after raising it with the parties, but concluded the dismissal was still unfair. It found that the new Interior Designer post was not a genuinely new role in substance, but largely the claimant's former role under a different title and with reduced pay. On that basis, it was outside the band of reasonable responses to require Ms Tyler to compete for the post rather than being slotted into it, and the consultation and appeal did not fairly engage with her argument that the role was essentially her own. The tribunal therefore upheld the unfair dismissal claim. It also recorded that, if redundancy had been established, the competitive interview process would likely have been reasonable and the claimant's low score was explained by her failure to give evidence-based answers, but that alternative view did not alter the liability outcome.