Julia Constable Joanne Harris Samuel White v Restaurants Etc Limited (In liquidation) — 2022

The claimants, Joanne Harris, Julia Constable and Sam White, worked in the respondent's senior operations team across its restaurants. The respondent entered administration on 3 April 2020 and later moved into liquidation. The judgment records that, following the COVID-19 lockdown announcement and the collapse in restaurant trade, the claimants were told on 18 March 2020 to inform staff in the London restaurants that they would be made redundant, and they then sent letters to about 120 staff and arranged individual meetings. The employees in the London restaurants were later dismissed, and the claimants were dismissed on 3 April 2020, 8 April 2020 and 9 April 2020 respectively.

The tribunal accepted that the duty to consult under section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 arose because the respondent intended to dismiss 20 or more employees as redundant within 90 days at one establishment. It held that the relevant establishment for the claimants was Tramshed, where the claimants were based and where 52 employees worked, and it noted that the business employed about 138 people across its sites. The respondent accepted that there was no appropriate representative under section 188(1B), so the claimants had standing to bring the complaint.

The respondent argued that the complaints had been presented prematurely, but the tribunal rejected that objection and held that it had jurisdiction to consider the claims. It referred to section 189(1) and section 189(5) TULRCA, and found that a complaint may be brought before the last dismissal takes effect or within the statutory period afterwards. The tribunal also recorded that the respondent did not contend that any protected period should be less than 90 days.

The tribunal found that the claims for a protective award were well founded because the respondent failed to comply with its collective consultation obligation before the proposed redundancy dismissals took effect. It therefore made a protective award and ordered the respondent to pay remuneration to each claimant for a protected period of 90 days beginning on 3 April 2020. The extracted text does not state a monetary amount for the award.