Mrs S Shipp (nee Canning) v City Sprint — 2019

The tribunal found that the claimant, a Marketing Director/Group Marketing Director paid £100,000 a year, was told a number of pregnancy-related comments between February and May 2019 by male colleagues, including remarks about contraception, career prospects, nursery and weight gain. Although those complaints were outside the three-month time limit, the tribunal held it was just and equitable to hear them. It found the comments were made because she was pregnant and would take maternity leave, and that they also amounted to harassment related to sex because they were unwanted and created a humiliating and degrading environment.

The tribunal then considered the later restructuring after the claimant went on maternity leave on 10 June 2019. It found that, while she was the most senior person left in the organisation, nobody contacted her to consult with her about the changes. Mr West treated her as having no role in the new structure, the consultation was found to be a sham, and the tribunal held that the claimant was unfavourably treated because she was on maternity leave. It found that the proposed Director of Marketing role did not exist in the structure shown to staff, that HR later produced a generic job description, and that the claimant was offered a lower-status role with a 20% pay cut.

The tribunal found that the requirement for the role to be based in the London office four days a week was imposed to make the role unattractive to the claimant. It held that those later acts were maternity discrimination and, in the alternative, direct sex discrimination. It also held that the four-days-a-week London requirement was a provision, criterion or practice that put women at a particular disadvantage and was not shown to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, so the indirect sex discrimination claim succeeded. The grievance and appeal complaints were not upheld as victimisation because, although the grievance was a protected act, the tribunal found the decision-makers were not acting because of it.

On dismissal, the tribunal rejected the respondent's redundancy case. It found the Group Marketing Director role had not ceased to exist and that the respondent had offered the claimant effectively the same role under a different title, with lower status, lower pay and new conditions. It held the dismissal was unfair under s.99 ERA 1996 and the maternity regulations, with the principal reason being that the respondent had decided there was no role for her because she was on maternity leave. It also found a breach of contract for failure to repay the £5,000 salary sacrifice agreed in 2018.

On remedy, the tribunal awarded a basic award of £715 after deducting redundancy pay already paid, £25,000 for injury to feelings, and £5,000 interest at 8% from February 2019 to August 2021. It made no award for loss of earnings because it found the claimant's consultancy income meant she had not proved loss to the hearing and future loss was unlikely. No separate additional remedy was made for the sex discrimination findings.