In person For the v Respondent — 2021

The claimant, Ms A Borkett, worked for Macmillan Cancer Support from 2006 as a system support analyst in the server team. Michael Collins became head of IT operations and governance in 2016 and later head of technology operations. The tribunal found that Mr Collins formed views about the claimant's performance through his involvement in the Greenrooms/Interim AD User project and the PCI/unstructured data work, and it accepted that his beliefs and opinions about her performance were genuinely held and to a large extent supported by other evidence.

The tribunal rejected the claimant's sex discrimination case. It found no evidence that she had been removed from the Greenrooms project, no deliberate reduction of her work because she was a woman, and no sex-based exclusion from communications or meetings. It also accepted that the claimant was not generally denied training and that the decision not to grant training on one occasion in January 2017 had a credible operational explanation linked to the Data Project. The tribunal held that the PDR grading of 'Needs Development' was based on Mr Collins' own experience of her work and conduct, not on sex, and that the later wording changes to the PDR rationale did not amount to sex discrimination.

The harassment allegations also failed. The tribunal held that the conduct complained of either did not occur, or was not related to sex, or did not have the purpose or effect required by s.26 Equality Act 2010. It found no basis for the allegations about annual leave, childcare-related collection times, the PDR grading, the PDR appeal, requests not to share appeal material, or the grievance process to be treated as sex-related harassment. It also rejected the suggestion that comments such as 'inopportune', 'challenging' or 'aggressive' were shown to be sex-based or capable of creating the proscribed environment.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant did protected acts in her grievance, grievance meeting, ET claim, grievance appeal and appeal meeting, but it dismissed the victimisation claim because the alleged detriments were not proved to be because of those protected acts. Some of the alleged treatment pre-dated the protected acts, and other matters were found to have reasonable explanations, including access control, confidentiality concerns, or legitimate performance management. On whistleblowing, the tribunal found that no protected disclosures within s.43B ERA 1996 were established: there was insufficient evidence of what was disclosed, when, to whom, or how any disclosure tended to show the statutory wrongdoing in the public interest. The claims were all dismissed, and no monetary award was made.