Represented himself. Accompanied by his aunt, Ms Lachowycz For the v Respondent — 2025

The respondent, a PR and social agency, faced a revenue shortfall of just under £500,000 against a £1.2 million profit target. It froze recruitment, cancelled bonuses and decided to make redundancies, including one Associate Director role. Four Associate Directors were pooled and scored against criteria including client leadership, team leadership and commercial awareness; the claimant scored 35/56, below the other three scores of 41, 45 and 49. He was first told on 24 April 2024 that he was provisionally selected for redundancy and was dismissed on 8 May 2024 with effect from 10 May 2024.

The tribunal accepted redundancy as the reason for dismissal and found the selection pool and criteria were reasonable. It found no bias in the scoring: Mr Collis scored the claimant independently, Ms Simpson did not score him, and Ms Carr’s involvement was limited to checking that the rationale was properly explained. The tribunal also held that the respondent’s failure proactively to ask about adjustments for the claimant’s hearing loss did not itself make the dismissal unfair, although it said best practice would have been to ask.

The dismissal was nevertheless unfair because consultation began only after the claimant had already been selected, was compressed into a short period, and the second consultation on 8 May 2024 went ahead while he was unwell and emotional. The tribunal held that a reasonable employer would have consulted at the outset and allowed a proper consultation period, and that the appeal could not cure those earlier defects. On Polkey, it found a fair process would have added four weeks, but after that there was only a 10% chance the claimant would have avoided redundancy. It noted that there would be no basic award because statutory redundancy pay had been paid, that unfair dismissal awards do not include injury to feelings, and that the remedy hearing was listed for 3 December 2025.