An employee of a college who had been with the institution for many years has received over PS30,000 as compensation following a ruling by an employment tribunal that his dismissal was unfair.
Paul Richter, a former employee of Prior Pursglove College, Guisborough, for 26 years, filed a claim with Atomix Educational Trust, formerly Tees Valley Collaborative Trust, following his dismissal last September. The tribunal ruled that the trust was liable for PS30,723.
Mr Richter was employed as a Liaison Manager, providing support to students with special needs and/or disability (SEND), managing the staff and providing cover for teaching. After a restructuring led by Dr Nichole Munro to separate the teaching and support roles in order to increase competitiveness, Mr Richter was laid off.
In the restructuring, Mr Richter was offered a newly created position of deputy leader in Endeavour, a SEND Team. The tribunal determined that Mr Richter had “ample experience, skills and abilities” to carry out the duties. He did not have a teaching qualification that was considered essential to the position.
Pay protection and offer of a lower-paid position
After a June 2023 meeting with Dr Munro, and Sharon Boyes as the HR lead, Mr Richter learned that he was not going to be considered for a deputy head post. He was instead offered a role as the student liaison leader across Prior Pursglove College and Stockton Sixth Form College. This post had no teaching or management duties and was accompanied by a PS4,953 salary reduction.
Mr Richter refused the offer citing his demotion and lower salary. The internal appeal he made was unsuccessful. The tribunal revealed that the trust had failed to inform him about a pay protection policy which would have protected his salary for a certain period after redeployment.
Dr Munro explained she chose not to offer pay-protection in order to benchmark roles. She expressed concern that offering this benefit to an employee could lead others to expect it. She did acknowledge, however, there is no legal bar to raising the salary of a newly redeployed position to match an earlier salary.
The tribunal accepted Mr Richter’s testimony that he would not have been able to take the position of student liaison leader if pay protection had been in place. Employment Judge JS Brenns found the trust in breach for failing to implement its own policy and that the employer “kept silent” about this benefit.
Compensation for court decisions
Judge Burns said, “The failure of pay protection to be offered was a clear violation of policy.” If the respondent wished to benchmark roles, or do anything contrary to the obligations under the pay-protection policy, it would have been better to change the policy after consulting properly.
I find that the respondent did not act reasonably in denying pay protection to the claimant. It also failed to take reasonable steps to minimise or avoid redundancy through redeployment in its own organization. This was outside of the reasonable range of responses that an employer could have taken in these circumstances.
The trust had also paid Mr Richter a redundancy payout. The tribunal awarded him an additional compensation of PS6,744 for pension contributions that were lost due to the dismissal. Judge Burns ruled that it was “just” and “equitable” to award compensation equivalent to one year of pay protection starting September 2023 based on the previous salary of Mr Richter.
