Dr Ban Al Jassani v Mears Housing Management Ltd (sued as Mears Group Plc) — 2021

This was a preliminary hearing before Employment Judge R S Drake sitting alone. The Claimant had presented unfair dismissal and direct discrimination claims, the latter described in the ET1 as discrimination by reason of religion or belief, but the discrimination case was not particularised. The only claim left extant after the preliminary hearing was unfair dismissal; no liability hearing on that claim took place in this judgment.

The tribunal refused the Claimant’s application to amend the claim to add further religion-based discrimination allegations. It applied Chandhok v Tirkey and Selkent Bus Company Ltd v Moore, and concluded that the proposed amendment was substantial rather than minor. The tribunal found the proposed complaints were out of time, that there was nothing in the evidence before it to support a just and equitable extension of time under section 123 of the Equality Act 2010, and that the original ET1 did not sufficiently foreshadow the new allegations, including the suggestion that the refusal of flexible working on or by 23 January 2020 was because of religion.

The tribunal also struck out the discrimination claim as pleaded in the ET1 under Rule 37 because it had no reasonable prospect of success. It held that the Claimant had not shown any factual basis from which religion could be inferred as the reason for the refusal of flexible working, and that it was not enough to rely on a difference of religion between the Claimant and a comparator. No remedy was awarded in this preliminary decision.