Ms A Rifat v Supadance International Limited — 2021

Ms A Rifat was employed by Supadance International Limited for many years and had been Factory Manager from 2017. The tribunal found that her role involved substantial managerial responsibilities, including overseeing factory workers, recording attendance and hours, distributing work tickets, and acting as the main link with the office, while she also did some limited factory-floor work. The respondent’s business was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the tribunal found that the claimant’s role remained a real one and that there was still a need to manage the remaining factory workers.

The dismissal took place on 19 August 2020, when the claimant was told she was redundant and given a letter. The tribunal found that there had been no individual consultation with her before that decision, no proper redundancy procedure, no pool or selection exercise, and no consideration of suitable alternative employment. It also found that the respondent did not explore alternatives such as reduced hours, a lower salary, or bumping another employee, and did not identify the particular saving that dismissing the claimant would achieve.

Applying the section 98(4) Employment Rights Act 1996 reasonableness test and the band of reasonable responses approach, the tribunal held that the dismissal was unfair. It rejected the respondent’s case that the claimant would inevitably have been dismissed one month later if a fair process had been followed, and instead found the evidence too scant to support a rational Polkey reduction. The tribunal said this was a case where reconstruction of what would have happened was too speculative.

The tribunal therefore upheld the unfair dismissal claim. It noted that the claimant had already received a redundancy payment, so any compensation would be limited to a compensatory award, and that the award was subject to the statutory one-year salary cap. It directed that a remedy hearing would be needed if the parties could not agree the compensatory sum.