Miss T Stewart v The Chief Constable of South Wales Police — 2024

The Tribunal heard a claim under s15 Equality Act 2010. The Claimant's rheumatoid arthritis and Raynaud's disease were accepted by the Respondent as amounting to a disability at the relevant time, and the case was converted to a liability-only hearing. The Claimant said the relevant 'something arising' was the reasonable adjustment of working from home, and she relied on three acts of alleged unfavourable treatment connected with a promotion opportunity for three fixed-term analyst roles in the TOEX team.

On the first issue, the Tribunal accepted that the 4 July 2022 email about the vacancies went only to the Claimant's work email address and not her personal email address, and that this was unfavourable because it meant she could not apply by the closing date. However, it found that working from home was not a significant reason for the mistake. Mr Parry had already offered to send future vacancies to the Claimant's personal email, the omission also affected other recipients by error, and the Tribunal accepted his evidence that the work address had been selected through an autoselect mistake.

On the second issue, the Tribunal found that the decision not to reopen the recruitment process was made by Human Resources, likely Lesley Davies, after the successful candidates had been appointed and had signed their contracts. It held that the refusal was driven by the fact that the process had closed and contractual commitments had been made, not by the Claimant's working-from-home arrangement. On the third issue, the Tribunal found that Mr Parry's 4 August 2022 email was not intended to dissuade the Claimant from making further enquiries and did not have that effect. It treated the email as a supportive explanation of why the TOEX process could not be reopened and as signposting another analyst opportunity with a lower travel requirement. All three claims were dismissed.