Mrs A Gannapureddy v Chester Desserts Limited and 1 other — 2022

Mrs A Gannapureddy worked for Chester Desserts Limited at the Icestone Gelato café in Chester from September 2018 until her dismissal in June 2020. The tribunal accepted that she was disabled by reason of word dyslexia and found that Mr Mohammed knew of that disability from her interview on 24 September 2018. It also found that, after she told him she was pregnant on 3 April 2019, her hours were reduced and her role changed in a way that later fed into the discrimination findings.

In the first claim, the tribunal upheld pregnancy and maternity discrimination complaints about demotion, reduction in hours, failure to carry out a pregnancy risk assessment until 11 October 2019, failure to provide the maternity policy, the August 2019 comments by Adil and Mr Mohammed, and the unpaid suspension from 25 September to 12 October 2019. It dismissed the allegations about a zero-hours contract, failure to stop the comments, and antenatal appointments. The religion-or-belief claim failed because the tribunal found there was no Sunday-working PCP and the claimant was in practice able to arrange Sunday work and Temple attendance.

The s.15 disability discrimination claim failed because the tribunal found that the reason the claimant needed extra time to read and understand documents was her dyslexia, but that the 10 October 2019 contract-signing issue was better analysed as a reasonable-adjustment complaint, not treatment because of that need. The reasonable-adjustments claim succeeded: the tribunal found the claimant was required to sign the contract at the grievance meeting, was not allowed to take it away and consider it further, and was placed at a substantial disadvantage by her dyslexia. It awarded £2,000 for that failure.

The first respondent was also found to have made unlawful deductions from wages in the first claim: for the unpaid suspension period, for paying £8.21 rather than £8.71 after 2 October 2019, and for reduced hours. The tribunal rejected the s.38 Employment Act 2002 claim because it held that the 10 October 2019 contract provided written particulars of employment.

In the second claim, the tribunal dismissed the allegations that the respondent failed to keep in contact or invite consultation, and that delays in statutory maternity pay were because of pregnancy or maternity. It upheld the pregnancy discrimination complaint about the redundancy process itself, finding that the claimant was selected without the same consultation and due process given to other staff and that her maternity leave was an effective cause of that treatment. It also upheld victimisation, finding that the grievance and the first tribunal claim were protected acts and that the dismissal was significantly influenced by them.

The tribunal dismissed ordinary unfair dismissal because the claimant had less than two years' service, but held that the dismissal was automatically unfair under s.99 ERA and reg. 10 of the Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999 because suitable alternative shop-assistant vacancies existed and should have been offered. It awarded a basic award of £313.56, a compensatory award of £500, injury-to-feelings compensation of £18,000 for pregnancy discrimination and victimisation and £2,000 for the reasonable-adjustments claim, financial loss of £9,568.89, and unlawful deduction awards of £1,150.46 and £966.99, together with £6,177.37 interest. The total award was £38,677.27, of which £35,743.72 was jointly and severally liable under the Equality Act and £2,933.55 was solely against the first respondent.