Mr G Ellis v Marshalls Group Limited — 2023

Mr Ellis had been employed by Marshalls Group Limited as a Lead Design Engineer at North Shields from 1 December 2009 until his dismissal for redundancy on 19 January 2022. The respondent carried out a restructure of its Landscape Protection business unit after a strategic review by Ian Dean, moving away from customised and bespoke products and reducing the need for Design Engineers. Mr Knight ran the selection exercise, using a matrix based on product category, design skills, software/systems and disciplinary record, and Mr Ellis was placed in the pool of four Design Engineers and scored lowest overall, 117 against colleagues on 119, 120 and 120. The tribunal found that the consultation process was genuine, that Mr Ellis was warned and consulted, that he had an appeal before Mr Tait, and that the respondent reasonably selected him for redundancy.

The claimant originally pursued an automatic unfair dismissal claim under section 103A ERA on the basis of an alleged protected disclosure made in an email of 15 December 2021, but he withdrew that complaint during oral submissions. The tribunal dismissed it on withdrawal. In its reasons, the tribunal found that the email concerned a galvanised sockets order and amounted, at most, to a minor cosmetic issue; it accepted Mr Knight's evidence that no significant weight was placed on it and rejected the contention that it was the real reason for dismissal. The tribunal found no meaningful evidence of bad faith, dishonesty or manipulation by the respondent in relation to the redundancy exercise.

On the ordinary unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal applied the redundancy provisions in section 139(1)(b) ERA and the established reasonableness authorities it cited, including Murray v Foyle Meats, Williams v Compair Maxam Ltd, Taymech Limited v Ryan, Mugford v Midland Bank, Lloyd v Taylor Woodrow Construction, British Airways plc v Green and Dabson v David Cover and Sons LLTD. It accepted Mr Knight's reasons for excluding attendance from the matrix, for not using PDM as a criterion, and for retaining Post & Rail within the assessment. The tribunal concluded that the claimant had been reasonably warned, reasonably consulted, reasonably selected, reasonably considered for alternative employment and given a reasonable appeal process, so the ordinary unfair dismissal complaint failed.