Miroslaw Urbanczyk v Samworth Brothers Ltd At a hearing heard By CVP — 2021

Miroslaw Urbanczyk was employed as an engineer from 1 February 2015 until his dismissal on 24 September 2020. He brought a single claim of unfair dismissal. The respondent said the dismissal was for redundancy arising from a reduced need for engineering cover during the coronavirus pandemic. The claimant said the redundancy was not genuine, that his role still existed, that agency workers were doing his work, that consultation was not meaningful, that the selection criteria were not fairly applied, and that alternative roles were not properly considered.

The tribunal accepted the evidence of the respondent witnesses and preferred it where there was conflict. It found that the business had been severely affected by the pandemic, that there was a real reduction in the need for employees to carry out work of a particular kind, and that there had been a lengthy collective consultation process with the Workforce Consultative Committee between June and August 2020. The selection matrix was agreed during that process, and the claimant was scored on the agreed criteria by Dave Marley and Steve Pattison. His score of 25 was the lowest in the pool, and the tribunal found that the scoring was carried out fairly and by the right managers.

The tribunal also found that there was no ulterior motive for the dismissal, rejected the suggestion that it was because his "face did not fit" or because of issues with replacement boots, and found that he was not interested in redeployment. It concluded that the redundancy dismissal was within the band of reasonable responses and that the claimant had ample opportunity to challenge the scoring and consider redeployment. The claim of unfair dismissal therefore failed and was dismissed. No tribunal award was made, although the judgment records that notice pay and redundancy pay had already been paid before the claim was submitted.