Mr E Evwaraye v London Borough of Merton — 2023

The tribunal accepted that the respondent's early help restructure was driven by funding pressures, the task-and-finish group's work and a decision to move to a more accessible "front door" model. It found that the claimant was not included in the later planning because the exercise was being taken forward at head-of-service level, and it accepted the respondent's explanation that the original draft structure changed because Ms Jones would head the new service and her reports needed social-work qualifications.

The direct race discrimination claim was dismissed. The tribunal accepted that some of Ms Evans' handling of funding discussions, redundancy letters and staff communications was poor and left the claimant feeling undermined, but it found those matters were not because of race. It also rejected the challenge to the final assimilation into a lower-graded post, finding the respondent had a non-racial explanation for the change and noting that one of the other new service managers was mixed race.

The harassment and victimisation claims succeeded only in relation to the respondent's failure to take the claimant's 25 September 2019 race grievance seriously. The tribunal found that the grievance officer was given too little support, that the race elements of the grievance were not properly resourced, and that the grievance was not handled within the respondent's own timescales. That conduct crossed the threshold for harassment and also amounted to victimisation because the shortcomings were materially influenced by the fact that the grievance raised race discrimination. All other pleaded harassment and victimisation allegations, including the Mr Young incidents, the consultation-meeting issues and the appeal decision, were dismissed.

On protected disclosure, the tribunal accepted that part of the grievance about an alleged failure to disclose information to the police was a qualifying disclosure under section 43B ERA 1996. It nevertheless found no detriment on the ground of that disclosure. No monetary remedy was recorded in this decision, so the remedy fields are null.