In person For the v Respondent — 2021

Mr Armitage was employed as Head of Design on a salary of £40,000 per year from 20 May 2019 until 17 April 2020. The tribunal held that he did not have sufficient service for an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, so the case turned on his allegations of automatic unfair dismissal under s.100(1)(e) ERA 1996 and s.103A ERA 1996, together with his contractual notice claim. It accepted that the respondent's business changed during the first Covid-19 lockdown and found that the April 2020 redundancies were genuine because the business had moved towards more remote interviews and needed fewer people in production, design and guest/sponsorship work.

The tribunal found that the claimant's 16 March 2020 Slack messages showed that he said he had symptoms and would work from home, but it did not accept that he was in circumstances of serious and imminent danger within s.100(1)(e). It also rejected the alleged protected disclosure said to have been made on or around 30 March 2020. The tribunal found that the discussion was about whether it was necessary to continue recording in the studio, not a disclosure that the respondent was putting health and safety at risk by asking people to return to the workplace. It further found that the claimant's own messages did not support a subjective belief that the statutory threshold was met.

The tribunal held that the principal reason for dismissal on 17 April 2020 was the claimant's failure to follow reasonable and lawful instructions during his notice period. It found that after he was given notice of redundancy on 3 April and told he was expected to work during notice, he adopted his own approach of responding only once per day at 10am, delayed work, did not complete a new brief, and did not reply when asked for timely updates. On that basis, both the unfair dismissal claim and the breach of contract claim were dismissed. The respondent's costs application was also dismissed because, although the tribunal considered the claim weak, it accepted that the claimant genuinely believed his case had merit and had not acted unreasonably in pursuing it.