Claimant v Monarch Holidays Ltd (In Administration) and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy — 2019

Monarch Holidays Limited went into administration on 2 October 2017 and approximately 60 employees were made redundant without notice on that day. The 21 claimants brought a timely claim for a protective award and had obtained ACAS Early Conciliation certificates. The matter was dealt with on the papers because the administrators did not resist the proceedings.

The tribunal found that the First Respondent’s Bromley site was an establishment for the purposes of section 188 TULRCA 1992. It accepted that there was no recognised trade union and no pre-existing consultation forum, but found that the employer did not arrange the election of employee representatives and did not consult the workforce at all about the proposed redundancies. No information was provided and there was no opportunity for the workforce to make proposals about avoiding redundancies or mitigating their consequences.

Applying the guidance in Susie Radin Ltd v GMB, the tribunal held that there had been a complete failure to comply with the section 188 consultation requirements. It found no mitigating circumstance justifying any reduction from the maximum 90-day period, noting that the possibility of redundancies had been present for some time and that there had been sufficient opportunity to begin the statutory process before the dismissals on 2 October 2017.

The tribunal therefore declared the complaint well founded and made a 90-day protective award for each claimant, beginning on 2 October 2017. It also recorded that, if the First Respondent is insolvent, the Second Respondent must meet liability for the protective awards subject to the Secretary of State’s statutory maximum liability under section 184 ERA 1996.