Mr Kevin Banks v Click Travel Limited — 2021

Mr Kevin Banks was employed by Click Travel Limited from 30 January 2017 until his dismissal on 12 December 2020. The respondent had placed him on furlough in April 2020, then began a redundancy exercise in October 2020 because of the COVID-19 impact on business travel and reduced demand. The tribunal found that the respondent had a genuine redundancy situation: the requirement for employees to carry out work of a particular kind had diminished, and the claimant was dismissed solely by reason of redundancy.

The tribunal nevertheless held that the dismissal was unfair under s.98 ERA 1996 because the consultation was not fair and reasonable. In particular, the tribunal found that the respondent’s exclusion of night shift workers from the claimant’s pool was inadequately explained in the documents, and that the claimant was not given a reasonable opportunity to challenge that approach. The tribunal also found that there was little consultation about the Job Support Scheme and that the claimant’s enquiries on that point were not properly addressed. The tribunal rejected the respondent’s suggestion that consultation would have been futile.

By contrast, the tribunal found that the selection criteria were objective and were applied fairly, and that there were no suitable alternative employment opportunities within the respondent’s organisation that the claimant could reasonably have been offered. The tribunal held that the night shift roles were substantially different from the claimant’s role, so it was not outside the range of reasonable responses to leave them out of the pool. The tribunal also found no culpable or blameworthy conduct by the claimant and made no Polkey or contributory conduct reduction.

On remedy, the tribunal concluded that if a fair consultation had been carried out, the claimant would still have been dismissed fairly in any event, but two weeks later. It therefore limited compensation to two weeks’ loss of wages and the employer pension contribution for that period, producing an award of £454.59. No basic award was made because the claimant had already received his statutory redundancy payment. The prescribed element for recoupment was £454.59 for the period 12 December 2020 to 26 December 2020.