What Amounts to a Redundancy Dismissal?

In Martland, Newbold & Scott v Cooperative Insurance Society Ltd: Sculley, Mitchell, Mace & Booth v Cooperative Insurance Society Ltd (2008), the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) considered whether the dismissal of an employee and immediate offer of re-employment on new terms and conditions amounted to a dismissal for redundancy. If it did, the employee would be entitled to a statutory redundancy payment.

The employees concerned claimed that they had been dismissed by their employer because of a decline in the need for ‘work of a particular kind', one of the statutory definitions of redundancy.

The EAT held that the changes to their work did not constitute changes in the kind of work so as to trigger a redundancy situation. The dismissals were not therefore for redundancy but for "some other substantial reason", which was another potentially fair reason for dismissal. Therefore there was no entitlement to statutory redundancy payments.