The Claimant's role was identified for redundancy and she therefore took on an alternative role. This role, according to the Claimant, was then structured to include an element of significant travel for face to face meetings with her team which the Claimant was unable to fulfil due to her childcare limitations. This is despite that, for the previous 10 months, the Claimant had successfully managed her team by conducting meetings remotely without complaint. The Claimant accepted redundancy and brought claims of sex discrimination and unfair dismissal to the ET. The ET upheld those claims, saying that it was not proportionate to require travel of significant distances in the Claimant’s role to fulfil the aim of business efficacy and staff morale. Instead, it appeared that this was the culture within the Respondent and something that the Respondent wanted but not what was needed. The ET also said that the Claimant had no choice but to agree to a redundancy dismissal rather than a disciplinary dismissal to protect her future prospects for employment going forward. This was not the same as the Claimant agreeing that there was a genuine redundancy situation. The ET concluded that the real reason for her dismissal was because she would not travel significant distances following the Respondent’s reorganisation and found the dismissal to be unfair. The Respondent appealed.

The EAT allowed the appeal. It was unclear from the reasons provided whether the ET had approached the question of group disadvantage on the basis that the childcare disparity meant this was intrinsic in the PCP or simply an obvious consequence of it. It had also failed to properly engage with the application of the PCP as a general rule, rather than in terms of its particular application to the Claimant. Although the ET had appeared to accept that the Claimant had previously accepted that she had been dismissed by reason of redundancy, it considered she should not be bound by that earlier statement of her position, going on to find that she had not been made redundant and that the Respondent had failed to demonstrate a fair reason for the Claimant’s dismissal, which was thus unfair. The Respondent had, however, understood that redundancy, as the reason for dismissal, was not in dispute and it was unfair for the ET to adopt the course that it did without first permitting the parties to address this issue. Moreover, the ET’s reasoning did not properly engage with the ways in which the Respondent had put (or would have put) its case, such that it could not properly understand why it had lost.