Ms. Ezzahra Azaanoun v Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd. Hearing: Public Preliminary Hearing — 2023

The Claimant signed up to Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd in July 2022 and attended interviews arranged with third-party potential employers, including Meritor and Mayflex, but was not offered employment. She complained in August and September 2022 about the attitude of a consultant and about her treatment in the interview process, including conduct by the third-party employers. Reed escalated the complaints internally and sent responses on 1 September, 15 September and 4 November 2022. The Claimant later presented an ET1 on 5 April 2023, after ACAS early conciliation, and ticked age, race, sex and marriage/civil partnership discrimination, direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

The ET1 contained no factual allegations and no attached particulars of claim, which the Claimant accepted. The tribunal also recorded that she had not named the third-party employers as respondents or sought to add them. Applying Selkent Bus Company v Moore, Abercrombie v AGA Rangemaster and Vaughan v Modality Partnership, the tribunal refused the application to amend the ET1. It held that allowing the amendment would move the case from a pleading with no factual case to one with many new factual allegations, while refusing it would cause hardship but not injustice to the Claimant.

The tribunal found that the ET1 contained no claims presented in time and that there was no basis for a just and equitable extension of time. It noted that, subject to any continuing act argument, all but one of the complained-of acts occurred before 3 November 2022, and the only potentially in-time matter was the Respondent's 4 November 2022 email. The tribunal held that this email merely repeated the final position already given in the 15 September 2022 response, changed nothing, and did not show that an ADR procedure had been offered and then denied.

The tribunal struck out the ET1 under Rule 37(1)(a) because the pleaded claims had no reasonable prospect of success, and it also struck them out because they were out of time. The Respondent's application for a deposit order was dismissed as moot. No monetary remedy was awarded.