Mrs H Bhatia-Patel v Palladium International Limited — 2018

Mrs H Bhatia-Patel was employed by Palladium International Limited, worked in the HSOT/HEROS HR team, and was on maternity leave from 18 September 2017 to 16 August 2018. The tribunal found that her Grade 5 roles were administrative in nature and that her evidence about deputising for management, making recruitment decisions, providing daily general HR advice, or having a strategic role in expanding the database was not credible. It accepted the respondent's evidence that the HEROS contract had changed focus, with DFID requiring a more strategic, decision-making and talent-acquisition approach and a reduction in staffing costs.

The tribunal found that the respondent's June to August 2018 restructure process was intended to reduce the team and that the new structure was decided on 13 August 2018, while the claimant was still on maternity leave. It accepted that the claimant was told on 17 August 2018 that her role was at risk of redundancy, then put on notice with the rest of the permanent team on 21 August 2018. Although the tribunal found that the arrangements for enabling staff on maternity leave to participate in the consultation process were ineffective in practice, it found that the claimant was consulted later, on a date chosen to suit her availability, and that the failure to provide full access to the earlier meetings did not of itself establish liability.

On the suitability of alternative employment, the tribunal found that the Grade 6 HR Advisor and Roster Talent Coordinator roles required greater autonomy, generalist HR knowledge, interviewing, headhunting, change management and strategic working, and that they were substantively different from the claimant's previous Grade 5 roles. It also found that the Grade 5 HR Administrator role was not suitable because it was around £10,000 lower paid than the claimant's post and pay protection was unlikely to have been agreed. The claimant applied for the Grade 6 roles on 8 September 2018, was interviewed on 3 October 2018, and scored lowest for Roster Talent Coordinator and second for HR Advisor; the tribunal accepted that her answers did not demonstrate the required competencies and that the psychometric tests were not relied upon.

The tribunal rejected the automatic unfair dismissal complaint under regulation 20(1)(b). It held that regulation 20(4) of the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 conflicted with Article 10(1) of the Pregnant Workers Directive and would need to be disapplied where a decision to dismiss and implementing steps were taken in the protected period but notified later, but found that this case did not fall within that situation because the dismissal decision was taken after the interview on 3 October 2018, after maternity leave had ended. For the regulation 20(2) complaint, the tribunal accepted that redundancy applied equally to Mr Didlick but found that the claimant was selected because of her interview performance, not because she had taken additional maternity leave.