Mr S Zaidi v Capita Business Services Limited HELD: by Cloud Video Platform (CVP) — 2022

The tribunal found that Mr Zaidi was dismissed for redundancy after a process arising from the respondent's move in General Ophthalmic Services from paper forms to an online system. The respondent said 120 employees were affected, 92 were at risk, 69 were redeployed and 23, including the claimant, were made redundant. The claimant did not dispute that there was a redundancy situation, that collective consultation took place, that he had four individual consultation meetings, or that he was in the correct pool.

The claimant's main challenge was to the scoring in the redundancy selection exercise, particularly the appraisal category. The tribunal found that the claimant's appraisal mark of "D" for 2020 was based not only on productivity but also on other matters, including Capita values and behaviours, a performance improvement plan in October 2020, not always logging in, clerical errors, a data breach incident, the need to re-open some cases, and not logging off Exion when there were IT issues. It accepted the respondent's evidence that management were entitled to rely on their own management information when assessing productivity, and it did not accept that the claimant's later documents showed better productivity in the way he suggested.

The tribunal held that the respondent acted within the range of reasonable responses in treating redundancy as the reason for dismissal, in the appraisal scoring process, and in the appeal outcome. The claimant's appeal increased his appraisal score from 2 to 3, which extended notice to 30 September 2021, but it did not prevent dismissal. The tribunal also found that the selection process was clear and reasonable, that the respondent had taken reasonable steps to seek suitable alternative employment for the claimant, and that the unfair dismissal claim was dismissed.