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United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Bretherton v. Sherman Treaters Ltd [2000] UKEAT 607_99_2903 (29 March 2000) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2000/607_99_2903.html Cite as: [2000] UKEAT 607_99_2903 |
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At the Tribunal | |
Before
HIS HONOUR JUDGE COLLINS CBE
MR D CHADWICK
MRS M T PROSSER
APPELLANT | |
RESPONDENT |
Transcript of Proceedings
JUDGMENT
Revised
For the Appellant | DAVID L REES (Solicitor) Employment Law Advisers Jasmine House Kingston Stert Chinnor Oxfordshire OX9 4NL |
For the Respondents | PETER TILLY (of Counsel) Messrs Lightfoots Solicitors 1-3 High Street Thame Oxfordshire OX9 2BX |
JUDGE COLLINS :
"We could have had no doubt that it was fair if the respondents had consulted over the initial decision and the scoring, but they did not do so."
"The respondents' actions were those of a reasonable employer, that is not to say that a different employer might not have approached the situation differently, but we could not say that the actions that the respondents took were not those of a reasonable employer."
And in the first sentence of that paragraph a reference is made to the Polkey decision.
"… in the case of redundancy, the employer will normally not act reasonably unless he warns and consults any employees affected or their representative, adopts a basis on which to select for redundancy and takes such steps as may be reasonable to avoid or minimise redundancy by redeployment within his own organisation. If an employer has failed to take the appropriate procedural steps in any particular case, the one question the industrial tribunal is not permitted to ask in applying the test of reasonableness posed by section 57(3) [as it then was] is the hypothetical question whether it would have made any difference to the outcome if the appropriate procedural steps had been taken. On the true construction of section 57(3) this question is simply irrelevant. It is quite a different matter if the tribunal is able to conclude that the employer himself, at the time of dismissal, acted reasonably in taking the view that, in the exceptional circumstances of the particular case, the procedural steps normally appropriate would have been futile, could not have altered the decision to dismiss and therefore could be dispensed with. In such a case the test of reasonableness under section 57(3) may be satisfied."