This was an appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal concerning the definition of redundancy. The Appellant had been working as a booker for the Respondent who introduced new book keeping software which reduced the number of hours she was required to work. The Appellant refused to accept the reduced hours and was dismissed. She brought a claim for Unfair Dismissal. The Tribunal accepted that a redundancy situation had existed even though there had been no reduction in the number of employees, only the number of hours. The Tribunal decided this contrary to precedent, relying instead Harvey on Industrial Relations and Employment law and the decision was appealed. The EAT considered the starting point was s.139 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. This states that an employee is dismissed by reason of redundancy if the dismissal was wholly or mainly attributable to "the fact that the requirements of that business ... for employees to carry out work of a particular kind ... have ceased or diminished or are expected to cease or diminish". The EAT held that if the business need for work of a particular kind had diminished, and less work of that sort needed to be done, there would be a redundancy situation regardless of whether there was a reduction in the number of employees. Dismissals in situations in which the employer's business needed fewer employees to do the same amount of work or situations where the amount of work available for the same number of employees was reduced could both be said to be for reasons of redundancy. The EAT therefore upheld the Tribunal decision whilst chastising it for failing to follow the applicable authority as it was required to do. http://bit.ly/NITzsf