In Bird v Stoke-on-Trent Primary Care Trust, the EAT confirmed that when judging whether a job is a suitable alternative to being made redundant, the two questions to be asked are: whether the alternative job is suitable employment for the employee and whether the refusal of the job was reasonable?
In this case the employer refused to make a redundancy payment to Ms Bird. They believed she had unreasonably refused offers of two suitable alternative jobs. A tribunal rejected her claim for a redundancy payment on the basis that her rejection of the one of the jobs was unreasonable.
The EAT upheld Ms Bird’s appeal. In assessing ‘suitability’, the question is not whether the employment is suitable in relation to that sort of employee, but whether it is suitable in relation to that particular employee. The whole of the job must be considered, including the tasks to be performed and the terms of employment. The two questions to be asked are: whether the alternative job is suitable employment for the individual employee concerned and whether the refusal of the job was reasonable? However, the tribunal had substituted its own view about the reasonableness of Ms Bird’s refusal and had not considered her particular circumstances. As the tribunal’s approach to the two questions had been flawed, its decision could not stand and the case was remitted to a different tribunal for rehearing.
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