Mr. S. Cain v Cobry Ltd. — 2023

Mr S Cain brought a single claim of unfair dismissal arising from his dismissal by Cobry Ltd on 3 July 2023. He had been hired in March 2021 as Google Workspace Lead on a salary of £55,000, initially in connection with Cobry’s work for Yondr. By 2023 his work mix had changed, Yondr was moving away from Workspace and towards Microsoft, and the revised Yondr retainer reduced the minimum monthly payment to Cobry from £4,300 to £3,570 and removed the separate standard Change Management payment.

The tribunal accepted Cobry’s evidence that by May 2023 the business was expecting a reduction in demand for the relevant work and that its accountants were forecasting monthly losses for the period 31 August 2023 to 31 January 2024. It found that the decision to make the claimant’s role redundant was taken at board level, that Mr Bryce was the key decision-maker, and that the Respondent was seeking to reduce salary costs in circumstances where the claimant was its highest paid employee. The tribunal also accepted that the management work the claimant had increasingly undertaken could be absorbed by remaining staff.

On that basis, the tribunal held that the dismissal was wholly or mainly attributable to the fact that the Respondent’s requirements for employees to carry out work of a particular kind had diminished and were expected to diminish further, both in relation to Yondr work generally and Change Management work in particular. It rejected the claimant’s challenge that the redundancy was not genuine, noted that he accepted the Respondent was facing business difficulties, and found no evidence that dismissal was for conduct, capability, personal caprice, or any reason other than redundancy.

The tribunal therefore dismissed the unfair dismissal claim under ss.94-98 ERA 1996. It recorded that the claimant had accepted a redundancy payment, made no claim for a basic award, and limited his compensation claim to four months’ pay, but no award followed because the claim failed. The tribunal also stated that, if it had been wrong about redundancy, it would have found the dismissal to be for some other substantial reason under s.98(1)(b) ERA 1996.