In a recent case the Court of Appeal held that a pre-transfer dismissal could be "connected with the transfer" within the meaning of regulation 7(1) of TUPE 2006, and therefore potentially automatically unfair, regardless of whether the identity of the transferee was known (or even contemplated) when the dismissal was carried out.
The court held that, in this case, the employment tribunal was entitled to find that the claimant's dismissal by administrators was connected with a subsequent TUPE transfer.
Further, the administrators' desire to make the business more attractive to potential transferees did not amount to an economic, technical or organisational reason for dismissal within the meaning of regulation 7(1). Therefore, the claimant's dismissal was automatically unfair.