Another month has brought another decision of the Employment
Appeal Tribunal focusing on TUPE.
In our previous TUPE alert we commented on the increasing number
of TUPE cases over the past 18 months which have ruled against TUPE
applying, and the way in which the Tribunals seem to be narrowing
the application of the "service provision change" head of
TUPE. The latest case, Liddell's Coaches v Cook, continues this
trend, this time by focusing on the relatively little known
exemption which disapplies TUPE in circumstances where services
transferred are connected to a "specific event" or
"task of short term duration".
In this case, a one-year contract between a local authority and
a coach operator to transport schoolchildren was said by the
Tribunal to be 'short-term', given the fact that similar
contracts were usually awarded for between three to five years. As
a result, the service provision change head of TUPE did not apply,
and there was no TUPE protection for the
