Mr Jamie Hardy v F.O Four Ltd — 2021

The Tribunal found that F.O Four Ltd had redundancy in mind as the reason for dismissing Mr Jamie Hardy for the purposes of section 98(1) and (2) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Mr Hardy had been employed from 1 May 2018 and was working as full-time General Manager at the Doncaster site when he was given notice of dismissal on redundancy grounds on 18 September 2020.

The Tribunal accepted the Respondent's evidence that, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it decided in early autumn 2020 to reduce management and overhead costs and restructure local management. It found that the old General Manager role and the new General Manager role were materially different, with the new role carrying lower salary and more day-to-day responsibilities and lacking the wider marketing, financial control, KPI and EBITDA functions in the earlier role.

Applying section 98(4) ERA 1996 and the redundancy authorities it cited, including Williams v Compair Maxam Limited, Moon v Homeworthy Furniture (Northern) Limited, James W Cook & Co (Wivenhoe) Limited v Tipper, Eaton Limited v King, Kvaerner Oil & Gas Limited v Parker, and Capita Hartshead Limited v Byard, the Tribunal held that the Respondent acted reasonably in relying on redundancy and in the procedure it followed. It found the consultation process, although short and conducted remotely, gave the Claimant meaningful opportunities to raise points, and that the Respondent reasonably sought alternative roles which the Claimant rejected because of the lower salary. The unfair dismissal claim was therefore dismissed.

The Tribunal also dismissed the Claimant's protective award complaint under section 189 of TULR(C)A 1992. It held that the Respondent had not proposed to dismiss 20 or more employees as redundant, so the collective consultation duty in section 188 did not apply and there was no basis for a protective award.