In Person For the v Respondent — 2020

This was an open preliminary hearing about claims against Respondents 11 and 14, who were respectively a recruitment agency employee and the agency that had introduced the Claimant to the First Respondent. The Claimant alleged protected disclosure detriments, race discrimination and race harassment arising from matters including pressure to leave, comments about immigration status, exclusion from the permanent company secretary recruitment process, and alleged differences in contractual benefits.

The Tribunal accepted that the latest relevant acts by Respondents 11 and 14, if any, ended on 15 October 2018 when the recruitment process for the permanent company secretary role ended. It rejected the argument that the Claimant’s dismissal on 30 November 2018 amounted to a continuing act by Respondents 11 and 14, and held that any later dismissal by the First Respondent was a consequence of an earlier decision rather than a continuing act by those respondents. The Tribunal also held that the alleged application of less favourable contractual terms by Respondents 11 and 14, if they were involved at all, occurred at the start of the employment and was not a continuing act by them.

On that basis, time for the discrimination complaints ran from 15 October 2018 and the Claimant should have contacted ACAS by 14 January 2019. He contacted ACAS on 28 February 2019 and presented his claim on 14 April 2019, so the claims were out of time. The Tribunal refused to extend time: for the discrimination claims it found that it was not just and equitable to do so, and for the protected disclosure claims it found that it was reasonably practicable for the Claimant to bring them in time.

The Tribunal also rejected the Claimant’s evidence that his shoulder surgery and related pain prevented him from drafting and presenting a claim between November 2018 and February 2019. It found that he had been able to send detailed emails and texts during that period, that he was a qualified solicitor familiar with Employment Tribunal proceedings, and that he was likely capable of drafting documents in November 2018, albeit slowly. The claims against Respondents 11 and 14 were therefore struck out for being out of time, and the Tribunal did not reach the merits of those claims.