TUPE Update: Suspension of Activities; Scope of Regulation 3(5); Automatic Unfair Dismissal
Published on: 03/10/2018
Article Authors The main content of this article was provided by the following authors.
Dr John McMullen Partner
Dr John McMullen Partner
Dr john mcmullen

John is an employment Partner at Spencer West as well as being Visiting Professor of Law at Leeds University Business School and serving on the editorial board of ELA Briefing, the journal of the Employment Lawyers Association. He was previously Head of Employment at Pinsent Masons.

John is one of the UK's leading employment lawyers with a national and international reputation. He is the country's leading expert on TUPE and is involved in a wide range of TUPE related matters, including service provision change, mergers and acquisitions, and public sector and third sector transfers.

He has been variously described as “the King of TUPE” and the “TUPE guru”. He is an expert in redundancies and restructuring and also provides advice to senior executives on termination of employment.

He is also:

  • the author of Business Transfers and Employee Rights, the leading work on TUPE. First published in 1987, it is a loose-leaf encyclopedia, known affectionately as the “purple book”, and is subscribed to by all major law libraries and law firms and by the Bar
  • the author of Redundancy: The Law and Practice, the leading work on redundancy law
  • an editor of Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment Law, commonly known as the practitioner’s “bible” and regularly cited in Court.

We cover some interesting cases in this issue. The European Court has taken the view that a temporary suspension of activities of five months in duration did not prevent a transfer of an undertaking; the GB Employment Appeal Tribunal has given valuable guidance on Regulation 3(5) of TUPE, which excludes a transfer of administrative functions between public administrative authorities from TUPE protection; and in Hare Wines Ltd v Kaur the EAT has found that an employee was automatically unfairly dismissed because of a TUPE transfer.

Temporary Suspension of Activities for Five Months did not prevent a Transfer of an Undertaking ⚓︎

In the European Court case of Jorge Luís Colino Sigüenza v Ayuntamiento de Valladolid, In-Pulso Musical Sociedad Cooperativa, Administrador

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Disclaimer The information in this article is provided as part of Legal Island's Employment Law Hub. We regret we are not able to respond to requests for specific legal or HR queries and recommend that professional advice is obtained before relying on information supplied anywhere within this article. This article is correct at 03/10/2018