United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

EAT procedure

“7. The Claimant’s employment commenced in 1997 and continued for a period of 14 years until her dismissal on 31 December 2011 on the grounds of redundancy.

8. The Claimant was employed to work at a site in Aylesbury.  The Aylesbury site was originally owned by Equitable Life Assurance (ELAS).  In 2001, HBOS bought ELAS’ existing pensions IT systems after ELAS had got into difficulties.  HBOS inherited a number of staff who transferred pursuant to a TUPE [re the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations].  The Claimant was one of those employees.

9. In 2009 HBOS and Lloyds, the Respondent, became part of the same group and the Claimant became an employee of the Respondent.

10. Before 2009, approximately 1,200 members of staff were working at the Aylesbury site.  The majority of these employees were part of what was the Respondent’s Life Pensions and Investment division (LP&I), around 200 of these employees were IT employees.  They were part of what is known by the Respondent as the Strategic Change & IT Team (SC&IT).  Providing IT services to the LP&I business.

11. The Claimant was employed as a Business Acceptance Test Lead.  The Business Acceptance Team (BAT Team) were part of SC&IT.  The Claimant’s role involved being part of the process of developing new IT systems for the Respondent and testing the Respondent’s systems from a user point of view identifying defects and reporting them.

12. Following the merger of HBOS and Lloyds the Respondent was required to look at the way in which it carried out its business and looked to make savings by working more efficiently.  One of the things that was decided was to consolidate LP&I activity in Bristol, Edinburgh and Leeds, creating centres of excellence in those locations.  This meant reducing or ceasing LP&I actively in other locations.

13. A strategic review was undertaken of the IT development activity carried on for ELAS at the Aylesbury site.  It was decided to attempt to re‑employ staff from the bank in both customer services and IT to run the remaining policy administration in‑house.”

“3.2 The Claimant asserts that she was unfairly selected for redundancy; that the Respondent undertook inadequate redundancy consultation; that no fair or objectively justifiable selection criteria were adopted; and that the Respondent did not take adequate steps to identify suitable employment.  […]

3.5 The Claimant further asserts that she was not informed of a suitable alternative employment for example of PSO role that Ms Anne Gooding was appointed to and commenced in November 2011; and other PSO roles in  November 2011.

3.6 The Claimant says that she was specifically blocked or prevented from taking up possible suitable alternative employment with Equitable Life in November 2011.”

“49. During the early part of 2011 Christopher Andrews the Respondent’s IT hosting team manager undertook a review of the support required to provide IT hosting for ELAS by the Respondent.  As a result a number of vacancies were advertised in about August 2011.  The Claimant was aware of these vacancies however for reasons which are not clear the Claimant had wrongly formed the view that she was ineligible to put herself forward for roles.  She believed the roles were to be outside of her grade and that it was therefore not possible for her to apply for these roles.

50. There appear to be two aspects of the Claimant’s misunderstanding.  The first one relates to the existence of a policy that in a redundancy process she was not permitted to apply for a role outside her grade.  The Claimant was a ‘C grade’ and the relevant Business Operational Analyst role was a ‘DL grade’.  The Claimant’s understanding is incorrect.  The evidence from the Respondent was that there was no such policy which limited the Claimant’s ability to apply for a role at a ‘DL grade’ when she was a ‘C grade’.

51. The second point which appears to have formed part of the Claimant’s misunderstanding is that the available roles were of much higher grade and therefore not the type of roles that she would in any event be considered for.

52. In about August 2011 the Claimant did not put herself forward for the Business Operational Analyst role which was advertised at that time. There was a conflict of evidence between the Claimant and the Respondent as to whether the Claimant was made aware of this role.  I am satisfied from the evidence that has been presented that the Claimant should have been aware of this role.  However, if she was not aware of this role this was not the fault of the Respondent.  The Claimant misunderstood the nature of the role or alternatively her entitlement to put herself forward for the role.

53. At the time that this role was first advertised the Claimant was away from work due to illness, she remained away from work for the whole of August until September 2011.  Although the Business Operational Analyst role was advertised for a fortnight in August nobody was appointed to the role.  The Respondent carried out a further review and determined that there were further roles which needed to be filled and so that role plus additional roles were advertised in September 2011.  There is again a conflict between the Claimant and the Respondent as to whether the Claimant was informed about these roles.

54. On this point the evidence of Mr Burns was not contested by the Claimant.  Mr Burns informed the Claimant about the roles at the mediation meeting.  The Claimant again may have misunderstood the nature of the roles and considered them to be roles which were outside the scope of ones that she would be eligible to put herself forward for.  I am satisfied that those roles were notified to the Claimant.”

“66. The Claimant attacks the Respondent’s position in relation to the Business Operational Analyst role.  For the reasons which have been set out above I am satisfied that the Claimant was aware of this role, that the Claimant was informed about the role by Mr Burns.  There may have been some misunderstanding on the part of the Claimant as to the nature of the role but the Claimant was made aware of the role.  I am not satisfied that that [sic] there was any desire to keep the role hidden from the Claimant or to prevent the Claimant from securing any other role with the Respondent.

67. A number of other matters have been referred to by the Claimant which arose out of the evidence.  The Claimant deals with these under the heading of ‘Business Operational Analyst’.  I am unable in relation to those matters set out by the Claimant, such as the matter relating to picking up documents from the photo copier, to conclude that there was any unfairness to the Claimant in relation to the redundancy process.”

Submissions and conclusion