Ms D. Naylor v Flintshire County Council — 2022

Ms D. Naylor was dismissed on redundancy grounds on 26 July 2020 after a 2019 reorganisation deleted her Housing Programmes Support Manager post. The tribunal accepted that the respondent’s Organisational Change and Redundancy Policy formed part of her contract, and the central issue was whether the respondent could withhold redundancy pay because she had refused suitable alternative employment. The tribunal also considered the alternative statutory redundancy entitlement under s.141 ERA 1996.

The tribunal found that the respondent did not follow the policy’s redeployment process in clause 8. The claimant had not been placed on the prior consideration vacancy list or asked to complete the skills and knowledge profile required by the policy. In those circumstances, the tribunal held that the forfeiture provisions in clause 14 did not apply, so the claimant remained entitled to the contractual redundancy payment.

Even if the policy exemption had applied, the tribunal found that the DFG Manager and Supporting People and Commissioning Manager roles were not suitable alternative employment for this claimant and that her refusals were not unreasonable. It compared the job descriptions, job-matching exercises and oral evidence, and concluded that the roles required knowledge and experience she did not have, including Supporting People work, construction-related contract management, external funding, and management of a much larger budget. The tribunal also found that the respondent had not given detailed reassurance about training or clearly explained why the posts were suitable for her.

The final award was the agreed contractual redundancy payment of £20,016.43, expressed as inclusive of statutory redundancy pay entitlement. The tribunal did not make any separate award beyond that sum.