Alexander Agombar v Lookers plc — 2021

The claimant, Alexander Agombar, was employed by Lookers Plc from 16 January 2017 until 31 July 2020 as a Sales Executive at the Colchester branch. He brought a claim for unfair dismissal. The respondent said the dismissal was fair and was for redundancy. At the end of the hearing the tribunal gave oral judgment on liability and the principles for remedy, and the written judgment records that the claimant was unfairly dismissed.

For remedy, the tribunal found that the redundancy exercise involved a real redundancy situation. It concluded that, because 2 out of 11 employees were to be dismissed and the claimant fell towards the bottom of the grading, there was a 25% chance that he would have been dismissed fairly if a fair procedure had been adopted or selection criteria had been fairly applied. The tribunal did not apply any ACAS Code uplift, recorded that the claimant had mitigated his loss, and recorded that there should be no reduction for contributory fault.

The basic award was cancelled out by the redundancy payment already received, leaving a net basic award of £0. The compensatory award was calculated using the difference between the claimant's former net weekly pay of £544.29 and his net average weekly pay in new employment of £496.89, producing weekly loss of £47.40. The prescribed element before reduction included £1,896 for 40 weeks' wage loss and £670.66 net lost pension contributions, then was reduced by 25% to £1,925.

The tribunal awarded £500 for loss of statutory rights or statutory protection and assessed future loss on the basis of 104 weeks to reach the claimant's former level of earnings. Future wage loss was calculated at £4,929.60, giving a non-prescribed element of £5,429.60 before the 25% reduction and £4,072.20 after it. The compensatory award and total monetary award were £5,997.20.