Mr S S Bhogal v The Culture Trip Ltd — 2021

The claimant, Mr S S Bhogal, brought a single unfair dismissal claim under section 98 ERA 1996 after his employment with The Culture Trip Ltd ended on 4 September 2020. The tribunal accepted that there was a redundancy situation within the meaning of section 139 ERA and that redundancy was the potentially fair reason for dismissal. It found that the downturn in travel bookings caused by Covid-19 meant the respondent’s need for an analyst in the Bookable Inventory Squad had diminished.

On process, the tribunal found that the claimant had been given adequate warning and that consultation was reasonable. The respondent carried out collective consultation, the claimant participated in it, and he then attended two individual consultation meetings. Although the claimant said some of his questions were not fully answered and that the timetable was too tight, the tribunal found that the respondent answered the vast majority of his questions, that any outstanding points were not significant enough to make the process unfair, and that the claimant’s own decision to delay booking his first individual consultation left him with less time to prepare applications for alternative roles.

On selection, the tribunal held that placing the claimant in a pool of one was reasonable. It found that Ben Shacham genuinely considered the issue and reasonably concluded that the claimant’s role was distinct from those of David Binns, Lucie Phillips and Vidya Murali, who were in different and, in two cases, more senior roles. The tribunal also accepted that the claimant’s core duties were those of an analyst, so the job title change to Analyst accurately reflected his work. It found that some comments and internal communications were unprofessional and that the lack of consultation over the earlier job-title change was regrettable, but it did not find that these matters materially affected the redundancy decision.

The tribunal further found that the respondent took reasonable steps to find alternative employment. The Chief of Staff vacancy was genuinely withdrawn because the respondent did not need to recruit to that role, and the Operations Manager process, although not fully aligned with the published assessment process, was not unfair. The claimant was not selected for the Operations Manager role because he lacked the necessary experience and could not compete with the successful candidate, Natalina Manni. Overall, the tribunal held that the dismissal fell within the range of reasonable responses and dismissed the unfair dismissal claim.