Mrs L Connor Mrs C Dixon v Carpetright plc (in creditors voluntary liquidation) — 2019

At East London Hearing Centre on 30 October and 1 November 2019, Employment Judge Mclaren sitting with Ms K Freeman and Mr P Lush heard claims arising from the 2018 finance restructure at Carpetright Plc (in creditors voluntary liquidation). The tribunal recorded that the redundancy exercise had a genuine business basis and that the process was poor, but it was required to decide separately whether Mrs Connor had been directly discriminated against because of age and whether Mrs Dixon had been unfairly dismissed.

Mrs Connor's age discrimination claim failed. The tribunal accepted that Mrs Woodham was a sufficiently similar comparator because she carried out a comparative role, but it held that the complaint about the initial failure to pool Mrs Woodham was not the treatment that caused Mrs Connor's dismissal. Mrs Worrall was not treated as an appropriate comparator because she was not at risk of redundancy and was in a more junior position. Although the tribunal found that Mr Karir favoured some staff and had previously engineered redundancies to retain people he preferred, it held that Mrs Connor had not proved enough facts to shift the burden of proof under Igen v Wong Ltd and Madarassy v Nomura International plc, so the age discrimination claim was dismissed.

Mrs Dixon's unfair dismissal claim succeeded. The tribunal found that the purported new Head of Financial Operations role was either the same job as her existing role or sufficiently similar to it, even though some tasks were redistributed within the team. It held that the respondent had confused accountability with production when it asked Mrs Dixon to complete the percentage breakdown, that the instructions concerned tasks in the substantive role, and that the respondent had not produced finance witnesses able to support its case on the job description. On that basis, the tribunal concluded that Mrs Dixon was not redundant and that her dismissal was unfair. It also found that she would have remained with the respondent organisation, so no Polkey reduction was appropriate. Mrs Connor's separate claim for 'other payment' was withdrawn.