Kayleigh Maguire v Wm Morrison Supermarkets Limited — 2022

The claimant was dismissed following a national retail management restructuring in which level 2 managers were assessed for level 3 roles. The tribunal accepted redundancy as the reason for dismissal and rejected challenges that the national selection criteria were inherently too subjective or that allowing the store manager to conduct much of the process without a people manager made the process unfair in itself.

The tribunal found no bias or bad faith by the store manager and was not satisfied that the claimant had been unjustifiably underscored. It also found that anomalous scores for two other managers were errors but did not affect the claimant's outcome, and that another manager's additional role preference did not disadvantage her.

The tribunal did find unfairness in the respondent's failure to give the claimant complete and accurate information about the expedited route for challenging her scoring after the provisional outcome. However, it held that the later appeal was conducted with significant attention and care, included a faithful rescoring exercise, and remedied that unfairness. The dismissal for redundancy was therefore within the range of reasonable responses and the unfair dismissal claim was dismissed.