In person For the v Respondent — 2019

The claimant brought a direct discrimination claim because of pregnancy under s.13 Equality Act 2010 arising from communications about her application for a Legal Assistant role with the London Borough of Islington. She was shortlisted for interview on 12 July 2018, became ill with a pregnancy-related illness around 9 July, and told the respondent she could not attend. In her 10:39 email of 10 July she said she did not wish to formally withdraw her application and asked that it be retained on file for possible future vacancies.

The tribunal found that that email naturally read as meaning that she was reluctantly accepting that she could not continue with the present application, but wanted to be considered for any future similar role. It also accepted Ms Nolan's evidence that this was how she read it, and held that Ms Nolan's response thanking the claimant and wishing her well was appropriate and predictable. The complaint based on that exchange therefore failed.

The tribunal accepted Ms Nolan's evidence that she did not read, or at least did not see any reason to respond to, the claimant's later email of 11:31 on 10 July, which had been sent to Ms Brown and copied to Ms Nolan. It found that, in the circumstances of a busy interviewing week, it was unsurprising that Ms Nolan would not act on an email addressed to HR but merely copied to her, and that even if she had seen it she would not have considered it required action. That complaint also failed.

As to the email of 24 July 2018, the claimant emailed Ms Brown after the application had been marked withdrawn on the system and she had been notified. Ms Brown had already left the organisation and the tribunal accepted that, under the respondent's practice, emails sent to her account after departure were not read by anyone else. On the facts found, the complaint of unfavourable treatment in relation to the non-response to that email also failed, and the claim as a whole was dismissed.