Case 2502519/2022 · Employment Tribunal

Mr E Chaplin v Short Richardson and Forth Limited In Voluntary Liquidation — 2023

Case reference: 2502519/2022
Decision date: 4 July 2023
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Arullendran Date

Indexed: 19 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Mr E Chaplin

Respondent

Short Richardson and Forth Limited In Voluntary Liquidation

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The tribunal considered a Rule 21 liability judgment after no response was filed. The respondent had entered voluntary liquidation and its liquidator informed the tribunal that he did not intend to admit or defend any claim. Judgment was therefore entered without a hearing on the basis of the information provided by the claimant.

The tribunal found that on 5 September 2022 the respondent informed employees that it would cease providing legal services after 30 September 2022 and proposed to dismiss 20 or more employees as redundant. It also found that there had been no proper warning or consultation with a recognised trade union or with the claimant, and that no employee representatives had been elected or appointed for consultation under section 188A.

Despite those findings, the tribunal dismissed the claimant's section 189 claim because he had resigned on 23 September 2022, before 30 September 2022, which the tribunal identified as the first day the respondent was proposing to dismiss employees as redundant. The tribunal also made no award for pension contributions because that matter was being dealt with by Clumber Consultancy.

Claims and outcomes

2 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Other	The tribunal dismissed the claimant's claim under section 189 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 for failure to comply with section 188, because the claimant resigned on 23 September 2022 before the first proposed redundancy dismissal took effect on 30 September 2022.	Dismissed	—	—
Other	The tribunal made no award in respect of outstanding pension contributions, stating that this issue was being dealt with by Clumber Consultancy.	Other	—	—

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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