Cameron v Digital Equipment Company Ltd

Redundancy concerns the cessation or diminution of the employer’s requirement for employees to perform work of a particular kind. It is the job or work requirement, rather than the individual employee as such, that must have disappeared or diminished. The statutory three-stage approach requires dismissal, cessation or diminution of the relevant business requirement, and a causal connection between them. A contractual redundancy entitlement may adopt the same substantive test. An employee cannot ordinarily create contractual redundancy by unilaterally deciding that existing work is unsuitable. On an appeal concerning factual redundancy, the appellate court will not interfere where the trial judge applied the correct test and the evidence reasonably supported the finding.

The claimant appealed findings made by a deputy High Court judge concerning his dismissal by the respondent employer. The judge had held that the claimant had no contractual entitlement to an enhanced redundancy payment and, in any event, was not redundant. On an earlier stage of the appeal, this court decided that the contractual entitlement issue favoured the claimant. The adjourned hearing concerned whether the evidence established that the claimant’s job had ceased to exist or that the employer’s requirement for work of the relevant kind had diminished when he was dismissed in February 1990. The central issue was whether the judge’s finding of fact was legally erroneous or unsupported by the evidence.

1. Appeal dismissed. The judge’s finding that the claimant was not redundant was supported by the evidence and could not be set aside.
2. The statutory three-stage approach stated in Safeways Stores v Burrell [1997] ICR 523 requires proof of dismissal, cessation or diminution of the employer’s requirement for employees to carry out work of a particular kind, and dismissal wholly or mainly caused by that cessation or diminution. The judge’s formulation substantially reflected that approach.
3. The contractual redundancy provision in the employer’s personnel policy was construed as requiring the claimant’s job to have ceased to exist in its current form or location, or otherwise no longer to exist within the contractual definition. It did not permit an employee to declare himself redundant merely because he considered the job unsuitable.
4. The contemporary documents referring to redundancy or the disappearance of the claimant’s job were not intrinsically inconsistent with the oral evidence. The evidence supported the conclusion that the claimant’s difficulties arose from a breakdown in personal relationships and his absence from work, rather than from the disappearance or diminution of the work undertaken by the group.
5. The group remained operational after the dismissal. The claimant’s non-replacement and the absence of immediate plans for him did not compel a finding of redundancy, particularly given the group’s fluid organisation and the evidence that work could have been developed for him had the employment relationship been restored.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On the earlier stage of the appeal, the court decided in the claimant’s favour on contractual entitlement. On the adjourned redundancy issue, it upheld the deputy High Court judge’s factual finding and dismissed the appeal.