Ms S Ismail, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2025

Mr Middleton was employed by The Hawk and Owl Trust Ltd as a Conservation Officer from 29 October 2001 until 5 May 2023. He brought complaints of automatic unfair dismissal and detriment for making protected disclosures (whistleblowing), together with ordinary unfair dismissal under s.98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The respondent maintained the dismissal was for redundancy.

The tribunal found that the whistleblowing complaints were not well founded and dismissed them. However, on the ordinary unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal concluded that redundancy as the purported reason for dismissal was a sham. The real reason for dismissal was that the claimant had complained about Mr Blumfield's management style, which is not a potentially fair reason under s.98, so the unfair dismissal claim succeeded.

The tribunal also set out numerous procedural failings, including a failure to investigate matters raised by the claimant, ignoring Occupational Health advice, inviting him to discuss his future shortly after major surgery, a predetermined decision to dismiss, inviting him to a disciplinary hearing without investigation, an obdurate refusal to postpone that hearing, and dismissing him for redundancy minutes after telling him disciplinary action had ended. The tribunal found that, even had there been a potentially fair reason, the procedural failings would in any event have rendered the dismissal unfair.