Polkey v AE Dayton Services Ltd

Mr Polkey drove a van for 4 years until he was told to come to his manager’s office and informed that he was being made redundant on the spot.

The Tribunal said this was "heartless disregard of the provisions of the code of practice" but recognized that redundancies were necessary.

Lord Bridge held that on the proper construction of the fairness test in the predecessor to the Employment Rights Act 1996 section 98, it was irrelevant to ask whether a different outcome may have resulted from a proper procedure, and it was not open for a tribunal to ask that. An employer does not act unreasonably if (1) employees who underperform are warned and given an opportunity to improve (2) employees who engage in misconduct are investigated and given a hearing (3) employees who are redundant are given good warning and a consultation with steps to minimise losses. But if the end result would be the same, then this will go to remedy not liability:

If it is held that taking the appropriate steps which the employer failed to take before dismissing the employee would not have affected the outcome, this will often lead to the result that the employee, though unfairly dismissed, will recover no compensation or, in the case of redundancy, no compensation in excess of his redundancy payment...[2] ... An industrial tribunal may conclude, as in the instant case, that the appropriate procedural steps would not have avoided the employee’s dismissal as redundant.

After the development of a requirement for procedural fairness in dismissal was introduced by Polkey, an attempt was made in 2002 to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 to add a statutory basis for procedural fairness. In 2008, the government repealed this attempt at statutory codification and reverted to relying on the case law developed in Polkey.[3]

• UK labour law

• Polkey Deduction: important 2013 case: Contract Bottling v Cave Bailii.org