Mrs B Knight v Havant and South Downs College — 2021

Mrs B Knight was a Black British English teacher who had worked on a variable-hours basis and wanted a fixed fractional post. The tribunal found that a permanent English teaching vacancy in May 2017 was not circulated internally, that she was the only likely applicant, and that the respondent gave no explanation for the omission. On the evidence, that supported an inference that the non-circulation was because of race, but the direct race discrimination claim was dismissed because it was brought long after the relevant events and the tribunal would not extend time.

The tribunal rejected most of the later discrimination, harassment and victimisation allegations. It did not accept that complaints shown to the claimant in June 2018 were fabricated, nor that the October 2018 appraisal delay or the later timetable changes were discriminatory. It found that the claimant's September 2017 complaint to Jon Myers was a protected act, but later conduct was not shown to have been because of that complaint. One December 2019 email comment by Ms Scott was found to be unwanted and related to race, but the tribunal did not find that it had the necessary statutory effect because the claimant did not know about it at the time.

The constructive dismissal claim succeeded. The tribunal found that the 3 December 2019 drop-in observation was carried out for too short a period and that the immediate move to an individual improvement plan did not comply with the College's own guidelines. It also found that Ms Richardson gave misleading evidence in the 2020 grievance investigation about the number of complaints and the claimant's 2018 performance, and that the respondent then failed to keep in touch properly while the claimant was on long-term sickness absence. The claimant resigned in response to those matters, so the tribunal held that she had been constructively dismissed and that the dismissal was unfair. Remedy was left to a separate case management order.