Employer’s unreasonable delay over alternative employment

Case 3: The facts

Ms Langford, a qualified teacher, was about to go on maternity leave when the school opened a 90-day consultation on a planned restructuring. All posts in her department were to be “deleted”, and staff were invited to apply for vacancies.

Langford attended a consultation meeting with her union rep, where she asked if her own redeployment application could be deferred until her return from maternity leave. She felt she would be disadvantaged if she applied for new posts just as she was about to take 12 months’ maternity leave.

It took her employer two months to answer her request, which it rejected. By the time her employer had responded, all the available vacancies had been filled and Langford lost the chance to participate in the interview process. Even so, the tribunal found that the dismissal was fair. Langford appealed.

The ruling

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) said that any process in which an employer fails to respond for two months on an issue that the employee has shown they regard as key cannot be “reasonable consultation” for the purposes of an unfair dismissal claim.

“A very important part of the assessment of the reasonableness of a redundancy dismissal is a correct judgment of the reasonableness of the attempts of the employer to find alternative employment”, the EAT said.

The claim was sent to a different tribunal to decide again.

Langford v East Sussex County Council UKEAT/0275/13/DM

www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2013/0275_13_1211.html