Case 2408544/2020 · Employment Tribunal
Mr D Caughter v Ainsworth Lord Estates — 2020
- Case reference
- 2408544/2020
- Decision date
- 24 November 2020
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Holmes Date
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Mr D Caughter
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningMr D Caughter brought a claim of unfair dismissal against Ainsworth Lord Estates. The tribunal found that he had been employed for less than two years, so he did not satisfy the qualifying service requirement in section 108 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 for an ordinary unfair dismissal complaint.
The claimant emailed on 13 August 2020 and argued that, because his redundancy selection was unfair or unreasonable, he needed only one year’s qualifying service. The tribunal said that was incorrect as a matter of law. It stated that section 108 requires two years’ qualifying service unless an automatically unfair reason applies, and no such reason was alleged in this case.
As the claimant was not entitled to bring the unfair dismissal proceedings, the tribunal struck out the unfair dismissal claim. Because that was the only claim before the tribunal, the proceedings were also struck out.
Claims and outcomes
1 finding recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal | The tribunal held that the claimant had less than two years' service and so was not entitled to bring an unfair dismissal claim under s.108 ERA 1996. No automatically unfair reason was alleged. | Struck out | — | — |
Legal tests applied
1 reference- s.108 ERA 1996
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.
Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
How we got this data
Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.
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