In person For the v Respondent — 2021

Mrs Cohen was employed by Pastor Real Estate Limited from 11 January 1999 until her dismissal on 31 July 2020, aged 73. The Respondent said the dismissal formed part of a redundancy exercise prompted by the pandemic, and the Tribunal found that the Respondent had reduced its requirements for lettings and property management work from seven employees to two. It also found that the Claimant was placed into the relevant redundancy pools, scored against set criteria, consulted with on four occasions, and then dismissed after her appeal was considered in writing by Mr Mitchell and Ms Maury. The Tribunal accepted that the accountant’s removal of the Claimant as a director on 20 July 2020 was a mistake and did not mean the appeal had been predetermined.

On the age discrimination claim, the Tribunal found that there was no conscious discrimination and no material inference that age influenced the redundancy selection. It accepted that some of the matters relied on by Mr Mitchell in the scoring, such as the Claimant’s historic use of a ledger, reluctance to use IT to its full potential, and resistance to new business initiatives, could in other circumstances be age-related, but found that in this case they reflected genuine views about her performance and attitude rather than age bias. The Tribunal also noted that the fact that the oldest employee in each pool was selected did not, on the evidence, justify an inference of discrimination. The claim was therefore dismissed.

On unfair dismissal, the Tribunal held that redundancy was a potentially fair reason for dismissal under s.139 ERA 1996 and that the Respondent acted within the range of reasonable responses under s.98(4) ERA 1996. It found that the pooling decisions were reasonable, that the selection criteria were sufficiently objective overall, that the scoring was fairly applied, that consultation was adequate, and that the reconsideration process, while not a true appeal because it was handled by the same managers, was nonetheless conducted conscientiously and did not make the dismissal unfair. On breach of contract, the Tribunal held that the contract entitled the Respondent to pay salary only in lieu of notice, that commission was dealt with separately in the contract, and that there was no binding agreement to pay commission for the notice period. No further monetary award was made; the Claimant had already received statutory redundancy pay of £16,140.