Mrs C Hughes v Burton and South Derbyshire College — 2021

The claimant, Mrs Hughes, brought a single unfair dismissal claim arising from her dismissal from the role of Contracts Administrator, effective 31 March 2020. At the outset of the hearing she confirmed that she was not challenging redundancy as the reason for dismissal and did not pursue the suggestion in her earlier papers that trade union activity was a live issue. The tribunal therefore proceeded on the basis that redundancy was the principal reason for dismissal under s.98(1) and s.98(2)(c) ERA 1996.

On the facts, the tribunal found that the work associated with the Respondent’s City College Nottingham contract was the relevant work of a particular kind for s.139 ERA 1996 purposes, and that this work ceased when that contract ended after an Ofsted inspection in November 2019. It accepted the Respondent’s evidence that around 80% of the claimant’s work was devoted to that contract and that she was the only administrator working on it. The tribunal also found that by February 2020 the claimant’s workload had reduced substantially and that the proposal to remove the Contracts Administrator role was approved because the work no longer justified a dedicated post.

The tribunal held that the pool of one was reasonable. It accepted Ms Drew’s evidence that the Business Development Administrator roles and the MIS Administrator role were materially different from the claimant’s role, even though they shared an administrative element. It also found that the Respondent genuinely considered those other Band 3 roles and reasonably excluded them from the pool. On the claimant’s alternative argument, the tribunal concluded that there was no obligation to consider ‘bumping’ her into the recently filled MIS Administrator post, noting the absence of a vacancy, the differences between the roles, the claimant’s earlier statement that she hated data entry, and the stronger fit of the appointed employee’s skills and qualifications for that post.

The tribunal further found that consultation was adequate in the circumstances. It accepted that the claimant was warned on 11 February 2020 that the Contracts Administrator role was likely to be removed, that formal consultation began on 27 February 2020, and that further meetings took place on 11 March, 13 March and 27 March 2020. The Respondent provided figures for redundancy-related payments, explained the proposal, monitored vacancies during the notice period, and offered an appeal right. The claim was dismissed. The tribunal added, in the alternative, that if dismissal had been unfair, it would have applied a 100% Polkey reduction because the claimant would inevitably have been dismissed at the same time in any event.