Mr B Pearce v Pantmawr Care Limited t/a TLC Domiciliary Care . Agency and 1 other — 2020

Mr Pearce was employed as a domiciliary care worker from January 2018 until 8 June 2018, when he was dismissed with one week’s notice. He was an Apostolic Christian and the tribunal found that, in practice, his work involved a desire to promote his faith to service users as well as to help them. The claim before the tribunal was ultimately treated as one for indirect discrimination on grounds of religion or belief under section 19 of the Equality Act 2010.

The tribunal accepted that complaints were made about Mr Pearce’s religious comments to service users, beginning with an incident on 26 February 2018 involving M, followed by further concerns and complaints during his period of unsupervised work. After an early March meeting he was told not to impose his religious views on service users, and that direction was reduced into writing on 5 March 2018: he must not convey or impose his personal belief system upon service users and must respect their privacy, dignity and respect. He was later kept under supervision, and the tribunal also noted that it did not admit an undisclosed covert recording because the claimant had wilfully breached the disclosure order.

The tribunal found that the relevant PCP was the management direction not to convey or impose a personal belief system on service users, not a broader prohibition on all expression of religion in the workplace. It held that the PCP was applied to the claimant and to staff generally. It further found that the claimant’s faith required him to promote Christianity and that the PCP put him at a disadvantage because he was warned, had his probation extended, and was ultimately dismissed after continuing to make religious references to service users.

The tribunal held that the respondent had shown the PCP to be a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting the emotional well-being and safeguarding of vulnerable service users, including those who might be distressed by religious discussion. It found that the respondent had first counselled the claimant informally, then given formal management instructions, extended probation, provided supervision and further guidance, and held another meeting on 6 June 2018, but those steps did not alter his conduct. On that basis, the indirect discrimination claim failed and was dismissed in the judgment sent to the parties on 10 February 2020.