Contract Bottling Ltd v Cave and McNaughton [2013] UKEAT/0525/12/DM

This was an appeal by Contract Bottling Ltd (“CBL”) against a Tribunal’s decision that it had unfairly dismissed the respondents. CBL had decided to make redundancies and used a redundancy “matrix” to compare employees in different jobs. The two respondents were selected from this matrix, both of whom worked in accounts, and were made redundant.

The Tribunal found that CBL did not identify the employees who carried out work of a particular kind that had ceased or diminished or was expected to cease or diminish and therefore neither of the respondents who were dismissed could be taken to be dismissed by reason of redundancy. CBL argued that the Tribunal should have applied the two stage test