Patricia Grover arrives at her employment tribunal in May with Andy Castle.

BLUE ISLANDS has fought off a claim for unfair dismissal from its former head of marketing.

An employment tribunal rejected Patricia Grover’s claim that the company’s redundancy procedure was unfair and found there was a genuine need for the company to cut staff.

Mrs Grover was first told she could lose her job when Blue Islands decided to outsource some of its marketing operations following the failure of its bid to buy rival Aurigny. She argued that other marketing staff and those at Healthspan, which is also owned by Blue Islands chairman Derek Coates, should also have been considered for redundancy but tribunal chairwoman Helen Martin said that was not the case.

The panel also found that the differentiation between PR and marketing meant that it was not inappropriate to exclude Blue Islands’ PR executive from the pool of selection for redundancy.

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