Margaret Blackwood Housing Association v Monaghan & Anor

An Employment Tribunal deciding unfair-dismissal claims must give sufficient reasons to identify material conflicts in the evidence, state its essential findings, and explain why it accepted one account rather than another. This is especially necessary where the asserted inadequacy of redundancy consultation depends on what individual employees were told and understood.

An employer must explain available options comprehensibly. A misunderstanding may make consultation unfair for one employee but not another. The Tribunal must nevertheless make clear findings showing what was misunderstood and why responsibility for it lay with the employer.

The Claimants, daytime support workers, accepted redundancy during a restructuring which replaced support-worker roles with key-worker and support-assistant roles. The Employment Tribunal held their dismissals unfair, while finding the dismissals of four night workers fair.

The Tribunal concluded that the Claimants had not been told how to apply for key-worker roles and had been left believing that an unsuccessful application would remove their option of a redundancy payment. The employer appealed, contending that the consultation given to all six employees had been the same and that the reasons were inadequate.

The issue was whether the Tribunal had adequately explained its findings and its conclusion that the redundancy consultation was unreasonable for these two Claimants.

1. Appeal allowed. The Employment Tribunal’s reasons were inadequate and disclosed an error of law. Its judgment did not provide sufficient detail of the evidence or explain how it resolved the material factual conflict about the information given during consultation.

2. The Tribunal had accepted the Claimants’ evidence that they feared forfeiting redundancy payments if they applied unsuccessfully for key-worker posts. That account appeared inconsistent with their ET1 forms and with the employer’s oral and documentary evidence. The Tribunal was required to identify that conflict, state the essential competing evidence, and explain why it accepted the Claimants’ account rather than the employer’s.

3. The Employment Appeal Tribunal accepted that an employer must explain employees’ options in a comprehensible way. A misunderstanding may be the employer’s fault. Accordingly, consultation may be fair for one employee and unfair for another. But the Tribunal had not identified what the employer said or did that was misunderstood, nor why the asserted misunderstanding justified treating these dismissals differently.

4. The deficiency could not appropriately be cured by further reasons from the same Tribunal. Its apparent misunderstanding of the restructuring process, and its failure to address the evidential controversy, required a complete rehearing. The case was remitted to a newly constituted Tribunal to be heard afresh.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal allowed. The unfair-dismissal findings were set aside and the claims were remitted for a fresh hearing.
• Employment Tribunal: Held the two Claimants’ redundancy dismissals unfair, while holding the dismissals of four other employees fair.