Case Study: Unfair Selection for Redundancy due to Employee Raising Whistleblowing Concerns

How Sarah Henderson, Employment Law solicitor based in our Brighton office helped a senior manager at a Local Authority challenge his selection for redundancy as part of a restructure in the Employment Tribunal.

The situation

Simon was Head of a Service at a London authority. There was a consultation around the restructuring of their services and Simon and other senior colleagues made detailed representations indicating their concerns about the impact of the proposed restructure. This included the statutory ramifications and potential breaches of the legal duties the local authority has in relation to their service provision.

Initially, Simon’s role was not going to be removed as part of the restructure but in a later version of the proposal the “Head of” role was to be deleted and his responsibilities absorbed by a Director.

Simon challenged his redundancy selection through the Council’s internal appeal process and then issued Employment Tribunal proceedings.

What Martin Searle Solicitors did

Simon came to us after he had issued his claim for unfair dismissal, which he had argued was not only unfair but was connected to his whistleblowing. We advised him that he needed to apply for an amendment to his claim to include a claim for whistleblowing detriment. This was important because he would only be able to claim compensation for injury to feelings, as well as loss of earnings, if he could establish this detriment.

We made an application to amend the claim, which was resisted by his former employer and the outcome was due to be decided at a Preliminary Hearing. In the meantime we entered into settlement discussions with his former employer.

The Result

We negotiated compensation of £16,500 for Simon which was mainly compensation for injury to feelings as he had secured another job and his loss of earnings claim was minimal. This was concluded through ACAS using a COT3 Settlement Agreement.

For expert advice on redundancy and unfair dismissal, contact our Employment Law Team on 01273 609911, or email info@ms-solicitors.co.uk.