Claimant v Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing Limited — 2020

This judgment is confined to a costs application. On 5 December 2019 the tribunal ordered the claimant to provide further details of her protected disclosures, details of the ACAS Code provisions she said had been breached, and a witness statement explaining why her claim had been presented late. The compliance date was 3 March 2020. The claimant did not comply, and when the respondent wrote on 6 March 2020 and again after receiving a further assurance on 9 March 2020, the requested information still was not provided.

The respondent applied first to strike out the claim for not being actively pursued and then for an Unless Order. The strike-out application was refused at the preliminary hearing on 22 May 2020 because correspondence from the claimant's representative showed that she was still pursuing the claim. The tribunal had also warned the claimant on 18 March 2020 that strike-out was being considered for non-compliance, and on 22 April 2020 it ordered her again to provide a witness statement explaining the delay and to particularise the protected acts and alleged detriments. She did not respond, did not attend the preliminary hearing, and did not provide evidence of ability to pay when given the opportunity to do so.

Applying Rules 76(1)(a) and 76(2) of the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure, and taking no account of any means evidence because none was filed, the tribunal found that the claimant's repeated and unexplained failures to comply with tribunal orders gave it power to make a costs order. It accepted the respondent's figure as a reasonable reflection of the time spent dealing with those failures and ordered the claimant to pay £560 by 3 July 2020. The judgment does not determine the merits of the underlying whistleblowing, victimisation, or discrimination allegations.