Ms N Harrington v Vodafone Group Services Ltd — 2025

Ms Harrington worked for Vodafone Group Services Ltd from 16 January 2017 and was dismissed with effect from 31 October 2022. Her direct sex, age and race discrimination claims and her harassment claim were withdrawn. The respondent conceded unfair dismissal, subject to Polkey and mitigation issues, and the tribunal held that the unfair dismissal claim was well founded. A later case management hearing was listed for remedy submissions.

The tribunal found that the first two alleged protected acts in March 2022 did not amount to allegations of Equality Act contraventions, but that there were protected acts on 31 March 2022, 1 April 2022, and again in the grievance to the CEO on 22 July 2022. It applied section 27 and section 136 of the Equality Act 2010, and referred to Nagarajan, Igen, Madarassy, Chalmers, Durrani and Fullah when assessing protected acts, causation and burden of proof. Most of the pleaded detriments were rejected because they were not made out, were too vague, had been withdrawn, or were not shown to be caused by the protected acts.

Victimisation succeeded only on two matters: the decision to place Ms Harrington on garden leave from 15 September 2022, and the decision to dismiss her. The tribunal found that garden leave was exceptionally imposed in her case, that the grievance of 22 July 2022 was more than trivially a cause of that decision, and that the redundancy process was opaque, including missing disclosure and no collective consultation. On dismissal, the tribunal found that the protected acts were part of the reason for the redundancy decision and that the respondent had not discharged the burden of proving that the protected acts played no part.