In person For the v Mr B Randle — 2020

The claimant, a band 5 nurse in supportive care, brought claims arising from events in June to September 2019, including alleged race harassment, direct race discrimination, constructive unfair dismissal, and notice-pay breach of contract. The tribunal preferred the respondent's evidence on the main factual disputes. It found that the interview question the claimant said was asked in November 2018 was not asked, and that the 18 June 2019 incident involved a significant delay in starting IVIG treatment for a patient, after which Ms Plummer showed the claimant the EPIC notes and raised concerns for training and patient-safety reasons.

The race harassment and direct discrimination claims failed. The tribunal held that the 18 June conversation, the 20 June email recording concerns about the claimant's pace and communication, the 3 September removal from the coordination rota, the 6 September discussion about an earlier leaving date, and the grievance outcome were all explained by clinical, training, or administrative reasons and were not because of race. It found no facts from which race discrimination could properly be inferred, rejected the claimant's comparator and statistics points, and held that the conduct was not for the purpose of harassment and was not reasonably capable of amounting to a hostile or humiliating environment on the facts found.

The constructive dismissal argument also failed. The tribunal found that telling the claimant on 5 July 2019 that he would not yet rotate to chemotherapy was consistent with the normal development path, that the sick-pay issue had been remedied, and that there was no course of conduct amounting to a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence or a last straw. On notice, the tribunal found the claimant had agreed an earlier leaving date, any later extension was conditional on speaking to Ms Keane, and no further sum was due because he had been paid to 15 September 2019. The grievance of 18 October 2019 was upheld only in part, in that a formal return-to-work interview should have been done, but it did not establish race harassment or any entitlement to a monetary award.