The claimant was one of two employees in a redundancy exercise. The ET found the exercise was a sham as it included a requirement that the new postholder should be able to speak Mandarin when neither of the post holders were able to do so. The tribunal commented that the claimant would have had “at least a 50% chance of being the successful candidate” but proceeded to reduce the compensation award by precisely 50%.

In this short judgment, the EAT decided the tribunal had failed to explain its reasoning for settling on a 50% reduction, which “whilst plainly the lowest it thought appropriate, was not the highest”. The matter was remitted to the same tribunal to revisit that reduction.