Ms B Marston v Excel Hospitality Limited — 2025

Ms B Marston, who identified her race as Black African, was employed as an Accounts Assistant from 1 November 2022 and was supervised initially by Maggie Birch. The tribunal found that the pleaded comment on 4 November 2022 was not made, that the question whether she knew what A/R meant was asked for a neutral training-related reason, and that the spreadsheet sent to a client in early November 2022 was not checked line-by-line because that would have been unreasonable, not because of race.

The tribunal found that the failure to mark the Claimant's birthday on 31 December 2022 was the result of a team decision not to celebrate birthdays any longer, not race. It also found that the Claimant did not raise allegations of racial bias at the 6 January 2023 review meeting or in the conversations on 9 January 2023 with Anwar Chowdhury and Danielle Doran. On the tribunal's findings, the resignation email referring to a 'biased attitude' did not amount to a protected act without more.

After the Claimant rescinded her resignation, the tribunal accepted that she was kept on A/R tasks under Ms Birch because Ms Birch was the obvious person responsible for that work, that the Claimant continued to make basic errors, and that she was later trained on I/A. The tribunal rejected the allegations that she was given mundane work, denied autonomy, denied software access, or withheld training because of race. It found that Mr Chowdhury refused her transfer request on 9 May 2023 because of performance concerns and an incorrect belief about service length, and that the dismissal on 16 May 2023 was for unsatisfactory quality of work, failure to follow instructions, and failure to raise issues in time.

The victimisation claim failed because the tribunal held that the first clear protected act was the appeal letter of 29 May 2023, after the relevant detriments. The appeal was nonetheless investigated, and Ms Monteiro upheld the dismissal on 28 June 2023, recording that she found no evidence of bullying or discrimination. Both the direct race discrimination and victimisation complaints were dismissed in full.