in Person For the v Respondent — 2023

The Claimant, Ms K Wabara, brought complaints of unfair dismissal, direct race discrimination, race harassment, direct disability discrimination and discrimination arising from disability against her former employer, Sherlock Holmes Park Plaza Limited. She relied on physical impairments of IBS-related symptoms, IBD ulcerative colitis and fibromyalgia in her disability claims, and on being Black in her race claims. The Respondent's case was that her dismissal was by reason of redundancy, following a restructure that reduced two Finance Assistant roles to a single cluster role across two hotels.

The Tribunal found that there was a genuine redundancy situation and that the Claimant was pooled with her counterpart, Ms Compares, and assessed through an interview and a blind-marked MS Excel skills test. The Respondent held four individual consultation meetings, provided selection criteria and interview feedback, and offered several alternative roles including Cluster Income Auditor, Cluster Credit Controller and a Senior AP Clerk role, at least one of which the Tribunal considered suitable. The Tribunal concluded the Respondent's warning, consultation, selection and search for alternative employment were all within the band of reasonable responses, and that the dismissal was fair.

The race and disability discrimination and harassment complaints were dismissed. The Tribunal rejected the Claimant's suggestion that the redundancy process was a sham to remove her from the business, finding the process to be transparent and fair. A remedy hearing was not required as all claims failed.