Mr A Lo v Adhar Project — 2020

Mr A Lo was employed by Adhar Project on a fixed-term contract that ended on 31 December 2018 after the DoL Project funding came to an end. The tribunal found that his employment ended by reason of redundancy. After hearing evidence, the respondent conceded that Mr Lo was redundant and that he had not been offered suitable alternative employment within s.141 ERA 1996, so the redundancy payment claim succeeded and the tribunal awarded £1,524 gross.

On the unfair dismissal claim, the only potentially fair reason pleaded was some other substantial reason. The tribunal held that this was not in fact the reason for dismissal and therefore the dismissal was unfair. The tribunal also said that, even if the reason had been redundancy, the dismissal would still have been unfair because there had been no consultation, no selection criteria and no proper consideration of alternative work.

Remedy was limited. The tribunal reduced the basic award to nil because Mr Lo had already been awarded a redundancy payment, and it made no compensatory award because it found that, if a fair procedure had been followed, his employment would still have ended on 31 December 2018. The tribunal found no contributory conduct. The judgment also records that an earlier race discrimination claim had already been dismissed before this hearing.