Miss J Abbott v National Car Parks Limited — 2021

This was a reserved judgment on the respondent’s application to strike out the claimant’s unfair dismissal and victimisation claims, or alternatively for a deposit order. The claimant had presented claims in June 2020 for unfair dismissal, victimisation and failure to provide written particulars, but the particulars claim was not pursued. The tribunal recorded that on 10 February 2020 the claimant and a colleague were told their HR roles were at risk of redundancy, that the consultation process continued through February and March 2020, that the claimant sent an email on 28 February 2020 alleging gender discrimination and other discriminatory conduct, and that she was dismissed on 16 March 2020 with an appeal heard on 8 April 2020.

Applying rule 37 and the authorities it cited on strike-out and deposit orders, the tribunal held that the unfair dismissal claim had reasonable prospects of success and should proceed. It identified triable issues about whether the redundancy exercise was genuine or a façade, whether consultation began when proposals were still formative, whether the decision to remove the claimant and her colleague from work during consultation indicated that the outcome had already been decided, whether the redundancy pool had been properly defined, and whether suitable alternatives were genuinely considered. The tribunal also noted the very short consultation period and the absence, on the material then available, of internal documents showing how the restructuring decision had been developed.

The tribunal reached the same procedural conclusion on the victimisation claim. The respondent accepted that the 28 February 2020 email was a protected act. The tribunal considered that some of the alleged detriments could amount to unfavourable treatment, and that there was at least some potential evidential weight in the way the respondent handled the claimant’s grievances after the protected act, including not following what appeared to be its usual grievance process and not appointing an independent grievance officer. It therefore held that the claimant’s victimisation claim was not so weak as to justify strike-out or a deposit order. No final findings on liability or remedy were made in this judgment.