A national charity has been ordered to pay almost £40,000 to a former employee after claims of unfair dismissal were upheld by an employment tribunal.
The Manchester tribunal found that The Children’s Society unlawfully dismissed Richard Brown, who joined the organisation in 2015 as a human resources business partner and worked in roles including service manager and project lead until his dismissal in March 2020.
The tribunal heard that Brown received a notice informing him that his role had been placed at risk of redundancy in February 2020 and subsequently applied for a redeployment.
According to court documents, Brown applied for a relationship officer role within the philanthropy and partnership team, which was also open to applicants who were not at risk.
The post was a grade lower than his existing role, but Brown told the court he “felt it was something he was interested in and for which he could demonstrate transferable skills”.
Brown said he included a short statement providing limited information on the understanding that he would have an opportunity to demonstrate his suitability for the role at the interview stage.
The Children’s Society told the court redundancies occurred on an annual basis and that the organisation provided employees with a portal where they could find opportunities for reemployment.
The charity’s organisational change policy also states that “employees at risk of redundancy have priority status for available posts within The Children’s Society”, as long as they meet the essential criteria.
Employment judge Michael Ord heard that Brown’s application was rejected on the grounds that it did not meet the basic criteria for the role.
Brown told the court he would have provided in-depth information, had he been told the importance of the paper application.
Brown also said he appealed the rejection, but by the time he received an outcome letter the position had been filled.
The court found that the charity failed to communicate details regarding the position, despite the fact that Brown had asked for support, and upheld the claim of unfair dismissal.
Judge Ord ordered The Children’s Society to pay a compensatory award including loss of wages and loss of statutory rights for a total of £39,868.
A spokesperson for The Children’s Society said: “We are committed to ensuring that our processes and practices around recruitment, redeployment and redundancy are fair, reasonable and inclusive.
“Following the earlier outcome of the tribunal we looked at the way we worked around mitigation of redundancy and internal vacancies so that our staff feel supported and informed.”