Mr Justin Lynn v Teamcard Limited — 2022

Mr Justin Lynn claimed that he remained contractually entitled to an enhanced redundancy payment under the respondent’s earlier handbook provisions. He said the handbook terms, including the redundancy policy in versions 1.05 and 1.06, formed part of his employment contract and that he should therefore have received the higher sum rather than statutory redundancy pay. Teamcard Limited denied that any contractual enhanced redundancy entitlement existed and said the claimant had already been paid all sums due.

The tribunal found that the claimant’s original 2002 contract did not refer to a handbook or any enhanced redundancy terms, and that the later handbooks expressly said they did not replace contractual terms. It also found that the claimant’s 2020 and 2021 contracts did not contain any reference to enhanced redundancy pay, and that the 2021 contract contained a whole agreement clause. On that basis, applying section 1(3) of the Contract Scotland Act 1997, the tribunal held that it could not look beyond the written contract terms to import the handbook redundancy provision.

The tribunal also said that even if the 2021 whole agreement clause had not been decisive, it would still not have found for the claimant. It accepted that the respondent had carried out a consultation process and introduced a new handbook and new contracts, that staff were told the new handbook was the current one, and that the claimant did not object at the time. The tribunal therefore concluded that the claimant was not contractually entitled to an enhanced redundancy payment when his employment ended in March 2022, and the claim was dismissed. It noted that, had the claim succeeded, any award would have been limited by regulation 10 of the Employment Tribunals (Extension of Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Order 1994.