The claimant was employed as a risk manager within one of the respondent’s three teams carrying out such work. In 2018, the respondent decided to consolidate the teams and the claimant was dismissed as redundant. Before the Employment Tribunal, she argued there was no genuine redundancy situation because the number of risk managers remained the same but the ET found that the two risk manager posts under the old structure had been replaced by two new risk manager posts, one with a leadership function. In those circumstances, the Tribunal held that there was a redundancy situation and so the dismissal was fair.

In this judgment Lord Fairley finds that the Tribunal had not correctly considered or applied the test set out in s139 ERA. That three risk teams became two did not, of itself, demonstrate that the need for employees to carry out risk management work had ceased or diminished and the ET made no finding on that point. Further the addition of a leadership role to one of the two risk manager positions was not directly relevant.. In these circumstances, the judgment was set aside, and the claim was remitted to a differently constituted tribunal for a re-hearing.