Ms B Williams v Imperial College NHS Trust — 2018

Ms Williams worked as a Pharmacy Buying Officer until she resigned on 1 December 2017. The tribunal accepted that the respondent knew she was disabled by depression from no later than November 2016, and it relied on earlier findings about the breakdown in working relationships and the temporary move to Charing Cross Hospital, but it treated those earlier findings as binding only for the earlier period they addressed.

The indirect disability discrimination claim failed because the pleaded PCP was framed by reference to the claimant's own mental health, which the tribunal held was not a PCP suitable for section 19 Equality Act 2010. The harassment claim also failed. The tribunal found that the meetings on 11 August 2017 and 15 November 2017, and the correspondence and brief encounter on 30 November 2017, were related to disability to some extent, but it held that they did not have the purpose or effect required by section 26.

The reasonable adjustments claim failed even though the tribunal accepted that the respondent had a PCP requiring attendance at certain meetings in person and that the claimant would likely have been disadvantaged if the 30 November meeting had gone ahead. The claim failed because the meeting did not in fact take place, and before the resignation the respondent had offered to provide a fuller written explanation rather than insist on the face-to-face meeting immediately.

The victimisation claim failed because the tribunal rejected the alleged factual basis for the ignoring allegation, found that the respondent's lack of transparency about the proposed investigation was not motivated by the protected act, and held that there was no breach of the ACAS Code in the circumstances. By contrast, the unfair dismissal claim succeeded: the tribunal found that the respondent's lack of transparency about the proposed investigation and the proposed formal meeting breached the implied term of trust and confidence, that the 30 November 2017 face-to-face approach was the last straw, that Ms Williams resigned in response without waiving the breach, and that the respondent did not establish a fair reason for the constructive dismissal. Remedy was left to a later hearing listed for 12 November 2019.