Mr Halpin worked for Sandpiper Books, and moved to China with them to carry out a sales management position. In due course, Sandpiper Books decided to close their China office, put Mr Halpin’s role at risk of redundancy, and outsource the sales services to a local agency. Mr Halpin was made redundant and brought an unfair dismissal claim. The EAT upheld the dismissal of his claim and held that it was correct to select Mr Halpin for redundancy from a pool of one and not to include any other employees (including those in the UK) in the selection pool: “selection only operates, when fairness is concerned, where there is a number of similarly qualified possible targets for redundancy.”
Mr Halpin was on his own in China and the work he was there to do was to be discontinued. It was therefore reasonably open to management to put him in a “pool of one”.
This decision is a welcome confirmation of the tribunals’ reluctance to interfere with redundancy pools where the employer’s choice of pool was within the range of reasonable responses. It may also be helpful for international companies to rely upon when seeking to argue against pooling employees based in different countries together for redundancy selection.
(Halpin v Sandpiper Books Ltd)