Miss Jennifer Habricot v Spirol Industries Limited — 2022

Miss Jennifer Habricot was employed by Spirol Industries Limited as a bilingual HR Administrator from 21 June 2021. On 19 October 2021 she was told that her role was being removed from the UK and that her employment would end that day, with payment in lieu of notice to follow in payroll. Her appeal was heard by Lynne McCann and rejected on 2 November 2021.

The tribunal dismissed the unfair dismissal claim because the claimant had been employed for less than four months and therefore did not have sufficient continuous service for an ordinary unfair dismissal claim. The judgment records that she was not bringing a claim for automatically unfair dismissal.

The tribunal also rejected the complaint about being accompanied and about consultation meetings. It held that there is no statutory entitlement to individual redundancy consultation meetings, and that the right to be accompanied in section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 applies only to disciplinary or grievance hearings. The tribunal found from the contemporaneous documents that the meeting in issue was a redundancy meeting.

The breach of contract claim failed because the claimant's contract did not provide for any redundancy procedure. The unlawful deduction of wages claim also failed. The tribunal accepted that the claimant had been paid as shown on the payslips, found that there had been no deduction from wages, and concluded that her calculation for 19 days' work was incorrect. It found the correct figure to be £724.82 and said she appeared to have been overpaid. All claims were dismissed.