In person For the v Mandy Fitzmaurice, HR Consultant — 2018

The claimant was employed as a Clinical Executive Assistant at a medical practice. After an October 2017 restructure, the practice later decided in August 2018 to revert to a single Practice Manager role and to disband the Clinical Executive Assistant and Patient Services Manager posts. The tribunal accepted that the dismissal on 14 September 2018 was by reason of redundancy within section 139(1)(b)(i) ERA 1996 and rejected the claimant's case that the restructure was a smokescreen to remove her from employment.

The claim succeeded because the tribunal found the consultation process was not reasonable within section 98(4) ERA 1996. At the meeting on 7 September 2018 the claimant was told that the restructuring decisions had already been taken, that her role was at risk of redundancy, and that no alternative roles were available. The tribunal held that she was informed rather than consulted on the key decisions, was not given an opportunity to influence them in advance, and that this was not cured by inviting her to raise concerns later. It also found that this was not a case where consultation would have been utterly futile.

Applying the Polkey principle, the tribunal concluded that proper consultation would have taken one further week but would not have avoided dismissal. It considered the alternative roles relied on by the claimant and found that she had declined the Practice Manager role because she said she was not qualified for it, that there was no vacancy for Accounts Administrator, Medical Reports Administrator, Reception or Payroll work, and that the claimant would still have been fairly dismissed after that additional week.

The tribunal therefore held that the dismissal was unfair only because of the inadequate consultation. It found that the claimant was not entitled to a Basic Award because she had received a fully statutory redundancy payment, and not entitled to a Compensatory Award because the enhanced termination payment she received exceeded the one week of pay to which she might otherwise have been entitled. The tribunal also held that she was not entitled to an award for loss of statutory rights.