Case 2408605/2022 · Employment Tribunal

J Bird & others (see attached Schedule 1) v Rutherford Cancer Care Limited (in Compulsory Liquidation) and 2 others — 2023

Case reference: 2408605/2022
Decision date: 5 September 2023
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Franey

Indexed: 18 May 2026

Parties

4 named

Claimant

J Bird & others (see attached Schedule 1)

Respondents

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The claimants brought claims for a protective award under sections 188 and 189 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 in respect of alleged breach of collective consultation requirements. The respondent companies had been in administration, and the High Court granted permission for the claims to proceed before the Employment Tribunal.

The liquidators submitted an amended response conceding liability while reserving submissions on the length of any protected period. The tribunal found the concessions sufficient for default judgment, and also considered the HR1 forms because the Secretary of State was an interested party.

The tribunal was satisfied that the claimants were employed by the relevant respondents at the listed sites, that each site had at least 20 employees proposed to be or dismissed as redundant, that there were no appropriate representatives, and that the relevant respondents failed to comply with their statutory obligations under sections 188 and 188A.

Claims and outcomes

1 finding recorded

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Trade union	The judgment concerns claims for a protective award under sections 188, 188A and 189 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. It is liability-only; remedy was reserved for a hearing on 18 September 2023.	Upheld	—	—

Legal tests applied

4 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The 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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