Mr M Coventry v Barleylands Glassworks Ltd T/A Ashes into Glass — 2021

Mr M Coventry was employed as an administrative assistant from 28 September 2016 until 28 July 2020, when he was dismissed by reason of redundancy after being furloughed in March 2020. He brought an unfair dismissal claim on two bases: that there had been no fair redundancy consultation process, and that the selection scoring system had not been fairly applied to him.

The tribunal accepted that, in the Respondent's urgent financial circumstances, it was generally reasonable to reuse the March 2020 furlough scoring criteria for the July 2020 redundancy exercise and to limit the selection pool to the claimant and two other office colleagues who had been furloughed. It found, however, that the criterion 'post' had not been fairly applied to the claimant. He worked in that area but scored no point for it, whereas the other two office colleagues each scored one point. The tribunal held that, on the evidence, the claimant should have scored the same four points as the other two and that a further selection exercise would then have been needed. It assessed the chance that he would have been dismissed in any event as one in three.

The tribunal also found the redundancy process was unfair because the Respondent did not properly warn and consult with the claimant. The emails sent in May and June 2020 did not amount to a fair consultation process, and the tribunal held that the onus was not on the claimant to initiate or organise consultation himself. It accepted that a fair consultation could have been conducted by telephone, even allowing for the pandemic and the Respondent's size. The tribunal did not treat the later informal meeting as a failure to hold an appeal, because in practice it dealt with the claimant's appeal grounds.

On remedy, the tribunal noted that the claimant had already received his statutory redundancy payment, so no basic award would be made. It also stated that any compensatory award would be reduced by one third to reflect the Polkey chance that he would have been dismissed in any event, and that the ACAS Code uplift did not apply to redundancy dismissals. A remedy hearing was listed for 4 May 2021.