Mrs B Denman-Brown v Grassfields Ltd — 2021

Mrs B Denman-Brown withdrew the Part Time Workers Regulations claim and the unlawful deduction claim for pension contributions. A further unlawful deduction issue concerning alleged 2018 shortfalls was held to be out of time under s.23(2) ERA 1996, so the tribunal said it had no jurisdiction over those items. The furlough-related figures were not awarded separately; they were treated as part of the compensation exercise for dismissal.

The tribunal found that the letter of 28 February 2020 was a dismissal, effective 30 April 2020, and that the reason was redundancy. It held the respondent had not followed the redundancy procedure in its handbook, so the dismissal was procedurally unfair. Applying Polkey and Software 2000, the tribunal assessed an 80% chance that the employment would have continued if a fair process had been followed, because the claimant would likely have been furloughed. The judgment recorded the unfair dismissal and redundancy payment claims as succeeding, but the final order did not allocate a separate redundancy sum beyond the basic award figure.

On remedy, the tribunal awarded a basic award of £392.40 and a compensatory award of £5,694.40 before reducing it by 20% to £4,555.52. That figure included £250 for loss of statutory rights and £5,022.72 plus £421.68 for lost earnings over the stated period. It refused an uplift under the ACAS code, treating the grievance letter as a request for clarification rather than a grievance, and it awarded £523.20 under s.38(3) Employment Act 2002 for failure to provide written particulars. The total ordered was £5,471.12.