Mr P Baniasadi v Unipart Group — 2023

Mr P Baniasadi was dismissed in a redundancy exercise at Unipart Group with an effective termination date of 31 December 2021. The tribunal rejected his case that dismissal was really caused by a breakdown in relations with Ms Syme, and found instead that the business restructure was genuine. It held that there was a redundancy situation within section 139 ERA 1996, or alternatively a potentially fair dismissal for some other substantial reason.

The dismissal nevertheless failed under section 98(4) ERA 1996 because the consultation was not meaningful. The claimant was not told the selection pool, the selection criteria, how his own scores were derived, or how many people were at risk. The tribunal found that the scoring document had not been made available to him during consultation, despite the respondent's later case that it had been placed on a shared Google Drive, and it considered that the appeal process did not cure those defects.

The tribunal accepted that the respondent took reasonable steps to look for alternative employment, and it declined to apply an ACAS uplift because the holiday pay issue was not treated as a grievance. It also found that any compensatory award for unfair dismissal would be subject to a two-fifths reduction to reflect the claimant's 40% chance of avoiding dismissal in a fair process. Separately, by consent, the respondent was ordered to pay £1,054.13 for accrued untaken holiday pay.