Claimant successful in unfair dismissal when pay protection aspect of the redundancy policy was kept quiet and not made known to the claimant.

The claimant worked for the respondent from August 1998. He was employed as a Liaison Manager until his dismissal in September 2024. Following a newly appointed CEO there was a restructuring. Staff were informed of this in March 2024 and allowed staff whose roles would be potentially affected by redundancy to apply to fill new roles.

The claimant applied for the internal vacancy of Deputy Head in the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Endeavour Team.  The claimant was strongly supported by his line manager who had detailed knowledge of his experience and capabilities. The Tribunal outlined that it was one where on a practical level the claimant could perform the role but he was barred from doing so due to his lack of stipulated formal qualifications. The management team met with the claimant in June 2024 and told him that he would not be considered for the Deputy Head role. Instead, the claimant was offered alternative roles as Student Liaison Lead at two separate sites.  The annual pay would have been £4953 per year lower. The claimant refused this, citing that it would be a demotion, would be across two sites and the pay was lower. As a result, the claimant was issued notice of redundancy and his last day of employment was in September 2024. The claimant brought a claim for unfair dismissal.

The Tribunal found that there was a genuine restructure and the respondent was entitled to decide how it wished to arrange its business.  The claimant made arguments that the Deputy Head role was extremely similar to his old role and he had more than enough experience to carry it out successfully. However, the Tribunal found that the role being filled by a teacher with formal teaching qualifications was not unreasonable. One other issue raised was a pay protection policy through redundancy which would have kept the claimant at his pay rate. However, the respondent kept quiet about that aspect without adequate explanation or justification.  The Tribunal found that it was a mandatory aspect of the policy and the failure to offer the pay protection was a clear breach of the policy.  The respondent argued that it wished to benchmark roles and that the Union did not complain about it.  However, the Tribunal found that if it wished to benchmark then it would have to change the policy first after proper consultation and the fact that the Union did not complain about it did not allow for it to continue.

As a result, the respondent was found to have acted unfairly in withholding pay protection from the claimant. This breached its obligations to take reasonable steps to avoid or minimise redundancy and fell outside the range of reasonable responses. This led to a compensatory award of just over £30,000. There was no basic award as the claimant had received a redundancy payment.

The importance of following policy cannot be understated. The Tribunal had no issues in relation to the case for redundancy, the process of consultation or the selection especially on the thorny issue of the qualifications required for the Deputy Head role. Indeed, the Tribunal made it clear that there is quite a lot of room for respondents to organise their business as they see fit.  However, the fact that the pay protection was kept quiet and the policy was not changed demonstrated unfairness.  This was directly linked to a failure to minimise the effect of redundancy which is a key aspect of the legislative intent. Therefore, employers in similar situations should ensure adherence to the policy or in advance of that a change of the policy to avoid being met with similar unfair dismissal actions.

You can read the case in full here.