Aaron Ireland v Wing Lee Creative Ltd — 2022

Mr Ireland worked for Wing Lee Creative Ltd as a graphic designer, later described as a Senior Graphic Designer. After the business was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, his working week was reduced first from five days to four, then to two, and on 31 March 2020 he was emailed a redundancy dismissal effective 1 April 2020. The tribunal found that the dismissal reason was redundancy, but it also found that there had been no consultation, no warning, no appeal and no meaningful explanation of why Mr Ireland rather than Mr Toora was selected.

Applying s.98 and s.98(4) ERA 1996, the tribunal held that the redundancy dismissal fell outside the band of reasonable responses. The need to reduce headcount was accepted, but the selection process was not fair: the respondent relied on an asserted LIFO approach that was not recorded contemporaneously, and the tribunal found that Mr Toora and Mr Ireland were doing substantially similar work by March 2020. The tribunal accepted that a fair process could have been completed quickly, but found that consultation would still have given Mr Ireland a chance to make representations. For Polkey purposes, the tribunal assessed the chance of Mr Ireland remaining employed after a fair process at 40% and said that this would be reflected at the remedy hearing.

The tribunal also upheld the notice-pay claim and the accrued holiday-pay claim, which it treated as breach-of-contract claims within the tribunal's extended jurisdiction. It found that Mr Ireland was entitled to six weeks' notice under s.86 ERA 1996 and received none, because the redundancy dismissal was effective the day after the letter and the respondent did not dismiss him for gross misconduct. On holiday pay, the tribunal found that Mr Ireland had not taken any holiday in 2020 and was entitled to payment for holiday accrued up to dismissal, including 24 to 31 March, because he was making himself available to work from home and the respondent could not lawfully treat that period as unauthorised absence. Remedy was not finally assessed in this judgment; issues including any uplift, ACAS code point, contributory fault and the alleged £92 redundancy shortfall were reserved to a later hearing on 7 June 2022.