Mrs A Yates v Your Housing Group Limited — 2025

At the preliminary hearing on 16 September 2024, Employment Judge McDonald considered the respondent's application to strike out Mrs Yates' unfair dismissal complaint under rule 37 of the Employment Tribunal Rules 2013. Applying the overriding objective and the guidance in Bolch v Chipman, the tribunal treated strike out as a draconian power to be used cautiously. It refused to strike out the claim, holding that the claimant had not been shown to have no reasonable prospect of success.

The tribunal also rejected the strike-out argument based on remedy. It accepted that some items in the claimant's Schedule of Loss were not the kinds of loss ordinarily recoverable in an unfair dismissal case, and that a redundancy payment would cancel any basic award under section 122(4)(b) ERA 1996. However, relying on Evans v London Borough of Brent, it held that an unfair dismissal claim may still have value even if compensation is limited or absent, because a successful claimant may still obtain vindication. The tribunal could not say, on the material before it, that there was no reasonable prospect of the claimant proving some compensable financial loss, including benefits claimed in the schedule.

On the liability issues, the tribunal identified disputes of fact that could not properly be resolved without hearing evidence. Those disputes included whether there was a genuine redundancy situation or reorganisation, whether the claimant's request to leave to take up a new job could amount to some other substantial reason, whether the respondent had looked for suitable alternative roles, whether the redundancy process was fair, and whether the grievance had been properly investigated. The tribunal noted the claimant's case that the redundancy had been "engineered", and also noted that the claimant asked for the final consultation meeting to be brought forward so that she could start her new job, with dismissal on 6 April 2023 and the new job beginning on 11 April 2023. It held that these issues, including the effect of the 5 April 2023 meeting notes, required a full evidential hearing and did not justify strike out.