(1) Mrs K Ahmed (2) Mrs E McMillan v Bristol City Council and 2 others — 2023

The claimants were Unit Coordinators at Bristol City Council's Welsman offices. During the Covid-19 period they worked from home for much of 2020, while the respondent sought more office attendance because of service pressures in the unit model. After meetings in September and October 2020, the claimants raised a grievance on 22 October 2020 complaining about pressure to return to the office during the pandemic and about health and safety concerns.

On the protected disclosure and health and safety detriment claims, the tribunal accepted that the grievance contained qualifying information and that the claimants had a reasonable belief about health and safety matters. It nevertheless found that the later treatment was not because they had made the disclosure. The redeployment offers, the email-list removal, the grievance handling and the delayed particulars were found to arise from the council's attempt to manage staffing and return-to-work arrangements, together with administrative errors, rather than retaliation for the grievance.

The disability discrimination claims failed. For direct associative discrimination under s.13 Equality Act 2010, the tribunal accepted that the claimants' relatives were disabled, but held that the reason for redeployment was the claimants' reluctance to return to the Welsman, not their association with disabled relatives. The indirect associative disability claims under s.19 also failed because the tribunal held that s.19 did not extend to the Follows-type associative claim advanced; alternatively, no mandatory requirement to attend the office had been imposed before redeployment, and the respondent's approach would in any event have been justified.

The First Claimant's race discrimination claim, based on her Bangladeshi ethnicity, also failed for the same reason: there was no imposed PCP requiring office attendance before redeployment, and the respondent's position was justified in light of operational difficulties. The unlawful deductions claim failed because the BG9 pay uplift took effect when the redeployed roles started on 29 December 2020, not from the letter of 11 December. On the written particulars point, the tribunal accepted that the respondent had not updated particulars for pay, title and the redeployment period, but held that no compensation was payable because the statutory award depended on success in other claims.