Tinnion Mr. William MacDonald v Northstone (NI) Ltd — 2021

Mr William MacDonald worked for Northstone (NI) Limited as an Area Sales Representative for the mainland UK sales area of NS Materials. The tribunal accepted that he had performed well in the role. In 2020, Covid-19 caused a sharp fall in the respondent's turnover, from about £7.5 million per month before the pandemic to about £1 million per month by June 2020, and the respondent decided to restructure and reduce the mainland UK sales force from three posts to two. Mr MacDonald was taken through consultation, scored against a redundancy matrix, provisionally selected for redundancy on 7 July 2020, dismissed on 10 July 2020, and unsuccessfully appealed in August 2020.

The only claim presented was unfair dismissal under s.98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The tribunal noted that Mr MacDonald did not plead complaints about the choice of pool, the selection criteria or their weighting, the adequacy of consultation, or the search for alternative employment. Applying s.139(1) ERA 1996 and the band of reasonable responses approach under s.98(4), with reference to authorities including Abernethy v Mott, Hay & Anderson, Moon v Homeworthy Furniture, Williams v Compare Maxam, British Aerospace v Green, Taymech Ltd v Ryan, Chandhok v Tirkey and Remploy Ltd v Abbott, it found that there was a genuine redundancy situation and that the dismissal was wholly or mainly attributable to that situation.

On the scoring exercise, the tribunal accepted that the claimant's scores for IT skills, weekly reporting and quality of administration, and updating and maintaining the sales database were within the range of reasonable responses. It held that the score of 3 for dealing effectively and timely with customer enquiries and complaints was not within that range. However, the tribunal concluded that this did not make a material difference to the outcome: even if all four challenged scores had been increased by one point, or by two points, Mr MacDonald would still have had the lowest total in the pool. The tribunal therefore held that the redundancy selection was fair when looked at in the round and dismissed the unfair dismissal complaint.