A senior finance executive dismissed after challenging his £30,000 annual bonus has been awarded more than £118,000 in compensation.
Andrew Blyth lost his £120,000-a-year role as a director in what an employment tribunal found was a “redundancy sham”, following a bitter dispute over his bonus.
The accountant had told company owner Courtenay Morison that he considered his bonus for the year unfair and believed it should have been substantially higher.
A tribunal heard that Mr Blyth’s yearly bonuses were typically worth about £30,000.
Mr Morison, the chairman and director of successful removals company Clockwork, became “disgruntled and upset” by the complaints and subsequently removed Mr Blyth through what was found to be a false redundancy process.
On the morning before Mr Blyth was forced out of the business, Mr Morison had even searched online for “Legitimate Reasons for Director Redundancy”.
At an Edinburgh employment tribunal in Scotland, Mr Blyth was awarded £118,223 after succeeding in his unfair dismissal claim.
Mr Blyth, who is based in Edinburgh, had served as Group Finance Director at Clockwork Group Holdings until his dismissal in December 2025.
Andrew Blyth (pictured) was dismissed from his £120,000-a-year finance director position in a “redundancy sham” after becoming involved in a bitter dispute over his £30,000 bonus.
The accountant told Clockwork owner Courtenay Morison (pictured) that he did not believe his bonus for the year was fair and felt it should have been considerably higher.
Clockwork describes itself as ‘one of the leading UK removals and storage companies’.
In November 2025, Mr Blyth had emailed Mr Morison about his views on the calculations of his bonus for that year, saying that it was ‘unfair’ and should be much higher.
Mr Blyth’s annual salary was £120,000, and his general annual bonus was around £30,000 a year.
After Mr Blyth said that they were not going to ‘completely agree’ because they had already discussed this issue, Mr Morison said that they had agreed the bonus 12 months ago.
Mr Morison said: ‘No that is not right or fair. We agreed the bonus 12 months ago. I’m not changing what was agreed back then.
‘You’d be furious if I changed the goal posts if the other way round.
‘I’m becoming more disgruntled/upset with your attitude to what you perceive to be right and fair. I think you need to seriously look at your position.’
Mr Morison then completely cut contact with Mr Blyth until six days later, even though they would normally have contact most days.
He invited Mr Blyth to a meeting, which lasted five minutes, and he said that he was making him redundant.
On the morning, just a few hours before the meeting, Mr Morison sent messages to HR saying he had researched ‘legitimate reasons for director redundancy’.
Giving evidence at the tribunal, Mr Morison said that he had been thinking about making Mr Blyth redundant for months because the company could no longer afford to keep his position.
However, Employment Judge Jacqueline McCluskey said that he could not have been thinking about the redundancy for months as he had only searched the redundancy the morning of his meeting with Mr Blyth.
She said: ‘His evidence was that he had been thinking about doing so for a period of months.
‘His evidence was that this was because there were three qualified accountants in the accounts team, the accounts team was top heavy and by making [his] post redundant he could make a saving of over £148,000.’
She ruled that Mr Blyth had been unfairly dismissed because Mr Morison had acted in ‘bad faith’ by trying to ‘dress up the dismissal as redundancy’ when he was annoyed about him trying to renegotiate his bonus.
Judge McCluskey said: ‘The Tribunal concluded that the operative reason in the mind of Mr Morison when he dismissed [Mr Blyth] was his disgruntlement and upset at [his] attitude in the email exchange with Mr Morison that his bonus was unfair and should be revised upwards.
‘Mr Morison’s emails were abrupt and forthright. Mr Morison said himself that he was disgruntled and upset. There had been no further contact from Mr Morison. That was unusual.
‘That is not to say that Mr Morison might not have had in his mind on the morning of December 10, 2025 how to dress up a dismissal for that reason as a redundancy.
‘That does not mean that the operative reason in the mind of Mr Morison when he dismissed [him] on 10 December 2025 was redundancy.
‘In reaching this conclusion the Tribunal was also mindful that there was no documentary evidence that redundancy or potential redundancy of [his] position had been in Mr Morison’s mind for months as he asserted.
‘The only documentary evidence provided showed that it was only a couple of hours before [his] dismissal meeting that Mr Morison had carried out an online search about “Legitimate Reasons for Director Redundancy”.
‘The absence of any documentary evidence prior to the dismissal date was a factor which the Tribunal weighed in the balance when concluding it was more likely that Mr Morison had not been thinking about making [his] role redundant for months.’
Mr Blyth found employment in 2026, but he earns a lesser salary than he did.
It was ruled that the company should pay £118,223 in compensation to cover his financial losses during unemployment and his future losses.