• if an employee claims that his dismissal was unfair because his employer failed to comply with the minimum statutory procedural requirements then unless the employer demonstrates that the employee would have been fairly dismissed anyway if a proper procedure had been followed it is open to an employment tribunal to take the view that the employment would have continued indefinitely and thus make no reduction from the compensation awarded. The exercise for a tribunal is to determine whether there was more than a minimal chance that the employee would have been dismissed anyway and "if the evidence that the employment might have been terminated earlier is so scant that it can be effectively ignored" it is entitled to conclude that there was no more than a minimal chance and thus make no deduction.

• while a tribunal is obliged to apply an uplift of between 10% and 50% to an unfair dismissal award if the dismissal is unfair because the employer failed to comply with the minimum statutory procedural requirements (see Employment Act 2002 s.31(3)) it can be appropriate for a tribunal to apply only the minimum 10% uplift even if the reason for the employer's failure was its ignorance of the statutory dismissal procedures.

  editor's note: it is understood that in some cases employment tribunals have taken the opposite line and have treated an employer's ignorance of the law as a reason for increasing the uplift rather than holding it to the 10% statutory minimum.

For relevant general notes see Polkey case and/or Disciplinary procedures/unfair procedures and their consequences and/or Unfair dismissal/redundancy and unfair dismissal/interaction of unfair dismissal & redundancy rules