Fish v Glen Golf Club

A redundancy situation does not itself establish that redundancy was the reason for a particular dismissal. The tribunal must determine, on all the evidence, whether redundancy was the wholly or mainly operative reason, rather than a pretext for dismissal for conduct or capability.

That assessment is one of causation and fact. An appellate tribunal will not interfere merely because an alternative conclusion was open, unless the finding was perverse. Employment tribunals must give sufficient reasons to resolve the central issues and clearly advanced material arguments. They need not address every factual dispute or credibility point.

The claimant, formerly the secretary of an unincorporated golf club, was dismissed in 2008 on the stated ground of redundancy after the club decided, for financial reasons, to remove the secretary role and redistribute or discontinue its functions.

He contended that redundancy was a pretext and that the true reason was criticism of his conduct or capability. He also challenged consultation, relying on differences between two versions of a management report. The Employment Tribunal at Edinburgh, in written reasons delivered on 18 May 2011, found redundancy to be the principal reason and dismissed the unfair-dismissal claim.

The claimant appealed on grounds of perversity and alleged failures adequately to address the reports and a contention that consultation had been predetermined.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal was entitled to find that redundancy was the principal reason for dismissal. The financial losses, the management report, the committee minutes, and the decision to abolish the secretary role provided ample evidential support for that conclusion.

2. Under section 139(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, the tribunal had to decide whether redundancy was wholly or mainly the cause of dismissal. A redundancy situation may be used as a pretext for dismissal for another reason. Consistently with Timex Corporation v Thomson [1981] IRLR 522, the existence of such a situation did not decide the causation issue. The Tribunal had nevertheless assessed the competing explanations and permissibly treated the criticisms of the claimant as ancillary rather than predominant.

3. The appeal did not meet the high threshold for perversity. It was immaterial that a tribunal could also have reached the opposite factual conclusion. The question was whether no reasonable tribunal could have made the finding actually made, which was not established.

4. The Tribunal’s reasons were sufficient. It was not required to resolve every factual dispute or provide a detailed discussion of each difference between the two reports. Its finding that the edited version had removed personal criticism because it was to be shown to a bank addressed the relevant inference. The alleged predetermined-consultation point had not been clearly advanced as a distinct material argument, and the Tribunal had made no error of law by failing to determine it.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: dismissed the claimant’s appeal and upheld the Employment Tribunal’s conclusion that he had not been unfairly dismissed.
• Employment Tribunal, Edinburgh: by written reasons delivered on 18 May 2011, dismissed the unfair-dismissal claim after finding that redundancy was the principal reason for dismissal.