An actuary’s workload shrank as some of the pension schemes she worked on wound up or moved to other providers, through no fault of her own
“EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome. upheld unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi... after employer failed to justify why she alone was in the redundancyA dismissal that occurs when your employer no longer needs the work you do, either because the business is closing, a workplace is closing, or the requirement for employees to carry out that kind of w... pool.”
Being the only person in your redundancy pool isn't automatically unfair, but your employer's reason for keeping the pool that narrow has to genuinely hold up, not just sound plausible.
- Ask your employer directly why colleagues doing similar work weren't included in your pool.
- Push for the actual evidence behind any stated risk or reason, not just the conclusion.
- If the reasoning falls apart under basic questioning, that's a real sign worth raising, not just a technicality.
The situation
An actuary's workload shrank as some of the pension schemes she worked on wound up or moved to other providers, through no fault of her own. Her employer decided her role should be made redundant and put her forward as the only person in the selection pool.
There were other actuaries at the company who did broadly similar work. The employer's reasoning for not including them was that moving a client's pension scheme to a different actuary risked damaging the relationship with that client.
What the tribunal found
The tribunal, and then the EAT on appeal, disagreed with how narrow the pool was. The risk of losing a client by switching actuaries turned out to be slight, and the employer already knew of cases where an actuary had changed with no harm to the client relationship at all.
The EAT set out a principle that matters well beyond this case: a tribunal must carefully scrutinise whether an employer genuinely applied its mind to who should be in the redundancy pool. It's not enough for an employer to assert a reason for a narrow pool. That reason has to actually hold up.
For more on what to check before you volunteer for redundancy, including how pool selection interacts with a voluntary scheme, see our guide on voluntary redundancy: what to know before you volunteer.
Capita Hartshead Ltd v Byard. UKEAT/0445/11. Employment Appeal Tribunal. 2012.