Mr A. Shidane v Dahabshiil Money Transfer Services — 2021

The tribunal accepted that the claimant, Mr A. Shidane, was dismissed by reason of redundancy from the respondent's compliance department. It found that the respondent had a genuine redundancy situation arising from a restructuring and a reduction in headcount, but that the dismissal still had to be assessed for fairness under s.98(4) ERA 1996.

The tribunal held that the consultation process was unfair because the respondent did not give as much warning as possible of the impending redundancies. Although the restructuring had been planned since November 2019, consultation did not begin until 21 April 2020 and lasted only nine days. The tribunal rejected the respondent's suggestion that earlier informal conversations gave the claimant sufficient notice.

The tribunal also found the selection exercise unfair because the claimant was assessed against the same salary benchmark as ordinary compliance officers, even though he was a Senior Compliance Officer and Deputy MLRO. That produced the lowest score for him, and the tribunal found that the respondent failed to apply its own benchmarking principle consistently. The tribunal further found that the respondent did not tell the claimant during consultation that it intended to create and fill a new Compliance Manager role, which deprived him of the opportunity to make representations or seek consideration for that post.

Taking those matters together, the tribunal concluded that the respondent acted outside the band of reasonable responses and that the dismissal was unfair. It did not determine compensation in this judgment; instead, it directed that remedy, including any Polkey issue and any comparison with the proposed Compliance Manager role, would be dealt with at a later hearing.