Claimant v STA Travel Ltd (In Creditors Voluntary Liquidation) c/o Rollings Butt LLP — 2022

The claimant, Mr M Carberry, appeared in person at a CVP hearing. The respondents, STA Travel Ltd (in creditors voluntary liquidation), did not appear or present any ET3. The tribunal treated the claimant's evidence as unchallenged and found him credible and reliable.

The claimant worked for the respondents as a store manager in Edinburgh and had been employed for just under nine years by September 2020. The tribunal found that the business operated as one unit, with key management decisions, HR, marketing, customer records, online booking, and telephone enquiries all handled through a centralised structure. On that basis, and in the absence of any contrary case from the respondents, it held that each store was not a separate establishment for the purposes of the 1992 Act.

The tribunal found that more than 20 employees were made redundant on 2 September 2020, including the claimant, and that there had been no prior consultation with him. There was no recognised trade union, no elected employee representatives, and no individual consultation. It therefore found a failure to comply with section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

Because the redundancies involved more than 100 employees, the tribunal applied the 90-day consultation requirement and, following Susie Radin Ltd v GMB & others, started from the position that a 90-day protective award was appropriate. It accepted that there were no special circumstances justifying departure from that starting point, referring to Clarks of Hove Ltd v Bakers' Union and noting that a standard insolvency was not itself a special circumstance. The tribunal therefore made a protective award for the claimant for the protected period of 90 days, running from 2 September 2020 to 1 December 2020, but the extracted text does not state a quantified monetary sum.