Mrs H. Redman v Total Telephone Solutions Ltd — 2022

The claim form included unfair dismissal, age discrimination, disability discrimination, notice pay, holiday pay and redundancy payment claims. At the preliminary hearing on 5 May 2022, the age discrimination, disability discrimination, notice pay, holiday pay and redundancy payment claims were withdrawn, leaving unfair dismissal as the only live issue. The respondent’s case was that the claimant was dismissed by reason of redundancy following the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the business.

The tribunal accepted that there was a genuine redundancy situation within section 139 ERA 1996 because the requirements of the business for telephone critiquers had diminished. It found that the claimant was dismissed because of redundancy, but held that the dismissal was not fair under section 98(4) ERA 1996 because the respondent did not carry out any meaningful consultation with the claimant before dismissal. The 22 September 2020 letter referred to consultation, but the tribunal found that the respondent in practice consulted only internally between managers and had already decided to dismiss by the time of the 8 October 2020 meeting.

On selection, the tribunal found that the pool of seventeen telephone critiquers was a reasonable starting point and that there was no evidence the claimant was selected for reasons outside the matrix. It accepted that some criteria, including KPI, attendance and future potential, were not applied unreasonably, but found that the performance review criterion introduced inconsistency and that the timekeeping criterion was applied arbitrarily by reference to how early staff arrived rather than whether they kept to contractual hours. The appeal process did not cure the earlier procedural defects. Remedy was reserved to a further hearing on 20 October 2022, with any Polkey reduction to be considered then.