L Charlesworth v The Governing Body of Dalmain Primary School and the London Borough of Lewisham — 2023

Ms Charlesworth worked as a teaching assistant at Dalmain Primary School from 2 October 2013 until her employment ended with effect from 31 August 2021. The School undertook a spring 2021 redundancy restructure, replacing a number of support staff roles with new Curriculum Resource Support (CRS) posts. The Claimant's unlawful deduction from wages complaint concerned the redundancy payment calculation, but she accepted the calculation before the hearing and withdrew that claim.

The unfair dismissal claim was limited to four complaints: that the School did not create a separate Level 3 nursery role, that it was not clear CRS posts would include 121 duties, that the School recruited two temporary SEND roles in summer 2021, and that the CRS interview and assessment process was unreasonable. The Tribunal found that the Claimant's previous TA/121 role was different from the new CRS role, which was designed for flexible deployment across the School. It held that the requirement for the Claimant's former role had ceased or diminished for the purposes of s.139 ERA 1996, and that dismissal for redundancy was within the band of reasonable responses under s.98(4) ERA 1996.

On the Level 3 nursery point, the Tribunal accepted that the School had been mistaken about the nursery ratio requirement, but found that this did not make the dismissal unfair. It also accepted the Respondent's evidence that, even if the School had known of the Level 3 requirement, any nursery staffing need would likely have been dealt with through the CRS recruitment process. The Tribunal found that the temporary SEND roles were not sought by the Claimant, and that the same CRS interview and assessment requirements applied to all affected staff. The unfair dismissal claim was therefore dismissed and no remedy arose.