Ms B Likulunga, Solicitor For the v Mr A Ratcliffe, Director — 2021

Hanna Janowicz worked for Konk Furniture Ltd as a delivery coordinator from 12 March 2018. Her role included organising weekly delivery routes, and the tribunal found that the business needed deliveries worth at least £18,000 each week. The claimant was pregnant and due to start ordinary maternity leave at the end of October 2019, which Mr Ratcliffe knew. The tribunal also found that the claimant had received a pay rise in May 2019 and that, for most of her employment, her performance was regarded as acceptable if not ideal.

The tribunal accepted that Mr Ratcliffe became concerned in late summer and early autumn 2019 about shortfalls in the value of deliveries being sent out on the claimant's routes. It found that on at least one occasion the value was only £9,000, that the claimant had not raised the shortfalls with him as instructed, and that he had formed a genuine view that her performance was no longer at the required standard. Although he asked about her intention to return after maternity leave and the dismissal meeting took place shortly before maternity leave was due to begin, the tribunal found that pregnancy and maternity leave were not the conscious or subconscious reasons for dismissal.

The claimant's grievance of 9 October 2019 was accepted as a protected act for the purposes of section 27 Equality Act 2010, but the victimisation claim still failed. The tribunal found that the apparent issue about a one-week notice period was a misunderstanding caused by the wording of Mr Ratcliffe's response, and that the later written explanation of performance problems was intended to set out the reasons for dismissal rather than to penalise the claimant for raising a grievance. All claims were dismissed and no remedy was awarded.