Use Of A Competitive Interview In Redundancy Process

Gwynedd Council v Shelley Barratt & Anor

The Claimants (Shelley Barratt & Anor) in this case were teachers who were made redundant by Gwynedd Council following a reorganisation of school services. The school they worked at was closed and a new school opened on the same site.

An Employment Tribunal found their dismissals to be unfair on the basis that:

• They had not been consulted over the proposals;
• They had not been offered a right of appeal against the decision to dismiss them; and
• Because of the manner in which they were required to “apply for their own jobs”.

The Respondent Local Authority appealed against that decision arguing that the Tribunal had applied the guidelines on a redundancy process too rigidly.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the finding of unfair dismissal but gave some useful guidance on approaching redundancy situations which could be particularly useful to employers in the current climate.

Comment

The generally accepted principles where employees are represented by a Trade Union include the employer seeking to agree with the union, proposed criteria to be applied to the employees at risk of redundancy to select who should be made redundant and that those criteria as far as possible should be capable of being objectively checked rather than based on the opinion of the decision-maker. The employer should try to select fairly in accordance with those criteria.

In this case, the employer took a different approach – competitive interviews – and they sought to justify this on the basis that they were making appointments to new roles rather than selecting from a pool. The Tribunal found that they were effectively being asked to apply for the same or substantially the same job rather than new posts so the Tribunal’s decision that this was unfair could be upheld.

However, the EAT did endorse the use of the competitive interview approach in cases where the exercise is “forward looking” appointing to new posts rather than selecting from a pool for redundancy.