Ms Louise Collard v STS Storage Systems Limited — 2021

Ms Louise Collard was employed by STS Storage Systems Limited as a Sales Administrator from 28 August 2012 until her dismissal on 1 July 2020. The respondent relied on redundancy arising from the first national lockdown and the reduction in work. The claimant had been placed on furlough under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, but the tribunal recorded that she was later selected for redundancy on her own and that the decision to dismiss had already been made before any consultation took place.

The tribunal found that there had been no genuine consultation before the dismissal decision. It noted that Mr Beill accepted he had not understood the need to consult before redundancy and said a consultation period would have been about two weeks, after which the same decision would have been taken. The tribunal rejected the suggestion that consultation would have been futile, finding that there were matters that could have been discussed, including the use of the CJRS and whether the claimant could have done project work or other available work.

The tribunal also found that the appeal process was not fair. Mr Tyrell was not the final decision-maker on the appeal because he would report back to the directors who had made the original dismissal decision, and the tribunal held that this made the appeal an illusion rather than a genuine review. For those reasons, the tribunal held that the dismissal was unfair. It also considered Polkey and concluded that it was not satisfied a fair process would still have led to dismissal on 1 July 2020, so no Polkey reduction was just and equitable. A remedy hearing was listed for a later date, so no monetary award was determined in this judgment.