The EAT considered the effect of an employer’s failure to comply with the statutory procedures in a redundancy.
Held: ‘there is an automatically unfair dismissal where there is a failure fully to comply with any relevant statutory procedure. Compliance with the statutory procedure does not, however, mean that the dismissal is necessarily fair or cannot be challenged on procedural grounds. It may still involve a breach of section 98(4). But in those circumstances the failure to follow an appropriate procedure will not render the dismissal unfair if the employer can show on the balance of probabilities that he would have dismissed fairly even had proper procedures been followed. So once the statutory procedural requirements have been met, the failure to comply with additional procedural safeguards will not render the dismissal unfair if the employer shows that the employee has not in fact been prejudiced as a consequence. This provision therefore reverses in those circumstances the well known principle established by the House of Lords in Polkey v A E Dayton Services [1987] ICR 301.’
Judges:
Elias J
Citations:
[2006] IRLR 422, [2006] UKEAT 0107 – 06 – 1204, [2006] ICR 1277
Links:
Statutes:
Employment Rights Act 2002 98(4) 98A
Cited by:
Applied – Zimmer Ltd v Brezan EAT 24-Oct-2008
EAT UNFAIR DISMISSAL: Procedural fairness/automatically unfair dismissal
This judgment addresses only the issue as to whether the Employment Tribunal’s finding of automatically unfair dismissal was wrong in . .
Cited – West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust v Evans EAT 19-Aug-2010
EAT STATUTORY DISCIPLINE AND GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES
Whether infringed
Impact on compensation
UNFAIR DISMISSAL
Compensation
Mitigation of loss
The principal issues in the appeal . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Employment
Updated: 28 July 2022; Ref: scu.347291
