Mr D Gormley v Ltd (In Liquidation) — 2024

The tribunal found that the claimant was dismissed by reason of redundancy. The respondent had changed the way it handled legal matters, reducing the requirement for employees to carry out the kind of work the claimant performed. The tribunal accepted that the claimant's role was unique at the material time and that a pool of one was within the range of reasonable responses.

The tribunal found that the respondent gave no consultation, did not consider the claimant for an alternative role, and provided no formal appeal mechanism. It concluded that a fair consultation process would reasonably have taken two weeks, but that the claimant would still have been dismissed by reason of redundancy after that period and would not have accepted significantly lower-paid roles.

The claimant was awarded a statutory redundancy payment and two weeks' gross pay for the failure to consult. The unfair dismissal claim was dismissed. The wrongful dismissal claim was also dismissed after the tribunal found that the claimant had continued operating his consultancy in breach of clause 5 of his employment contract, and it considered it unnecessary to determine issues about emails sent to personal accounts.