Mrs H Riley v Premier Christian Communications Ltd — 2020

Mrs H Riley had Hashimoto's thyroiditis and iron and ferritin deficiency, which the tribunal treated together as a disability. The respondent accepted corporate knowledge of the disability; Ms Charmaine Noble-McClean knew of it when the claimant returned in January 2018, and Mr John Buckeridge only learned details in March 2020. In December 2019 the claimant moved to a revised Woman Alive role, her hours increased from 14 to 21 per week, and the agreed pattern was one office day and two home-working days per week.

After the March 2020 lockdown the respondent furloughed the claimant and then placed her at risk of redundancy. A consultation process followed, the claimant appealed, and the trustees later approved a furlough-based alternative under which affected staff could remain on furlough until 31 October 2020 if they resigned. The claimant signed that Agreement on 7 July 2020, her appeal was then said to be upheld, and she was paid under the furlough arrangement until the end of October.

The tribunal held that the original dismissal on 3 June 2020 was reversed when the appeal was upheld on 8 July 2020, so there was no dismissal at the date the claim was presented. It also held there was no constructive dismissal because the claimant's October resignation was given pursuant to the Agreement rather than in response to any repudiatory breach. On that basis the unfair dismissal, constructive dismissal, redundancy payment and wrongful dismissal complaints failed; the tribunal also rejected the claimant's contention that the Agreement was void for duress and found that due notice had in any event been given.

The disability discrimination complaint under ss13, 15 and 20-21 of the Equality Act 2010 was dismissed. The tribunal accepted that the claimant's disability made commuting difficult and that office attendance was a PCP, but found no sufficient causal link between the challenged treatment and disability or its consequences, no pattern of disability-based decision-making in the redundancy exercise, and no further reasonable adjustment that it was reasonable to require. The harassment and victimisation complaints failed for similar reasons: the conduct relied on was not found to be related to disability in the statutory sense, the April and May 2020 emails did not amount to protected acts alleging a contravention of the Act, and many earlier allegations were out of time. The Working Time Regulations claim failed because the Agreement treated the claimant as having taken her outstanding leave before 31 October 2020, so nothing was payable on termination and no monetary award was made.