Mr C Okeke v First Bus Central Services Ltd — 2022

On 5 August 2022 the tribunal made a deposit order in relation to the complaints of race discrimination and religion or belief discrimination, explaining that those complaints had little reasonable prospect of success. The Claimant was ordered to pay deposits by 19 August 2022 as a condition of continuing with those claims, but he did not do so. The tribunal therefore struck out both discrimination complaints under Employment Tribunal Rule 39(4).

The tribunal also considered the remaining complaints of unfair dismissal and redundancy payment. It recorded that the Claimant had worked for the Respondent for around three months. The tribunal explained that s.108 Employment Rights Act 1996 generally requires two years' service before an employee can bring an unfair dismissal complaint, subject to specific exceptions, and that the Claimant had not relied on any exception in his claim form or at the preliminary hearing.

The Claimant suggested that the matter was a whistleblowing case, but the tribunal noted that he identified his claim form itself as the protected disclosure because he had ticked the box asking for the claim to be referred to a regulator and had set out the background to his complaints. The tribunal said a complaint that he was unfairly dismissed for whistleblowing could not succeed if the dismissal took place before the whistleblowing. It also said s.155 Employment Rights Act 1996 requires two years' service for a redundancy payment and that there are no equivalent exceptions. Because the Claimant gave no explanation of when a protected disclosure was made, what was said, or any basis for a redundancy payment claim, both remaining complaints were struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success. The November 2022 hearing was cancelled.