Case 2403044/2016 · Employment Tribunal
Samantha Walker v The Co-Operative Group Ltd — 2018
- Case reference
- 2403044/2016
- Decision date
- 17 August 2018
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Sherratt
- Panel members
- Ms L Atkinson, Mr W Haydock
Parties
3 namedKey findings
Tribunal's reasoningThe claimant brought multiple claims against the Co-operative Group Limited (First Respondent) and Richard Pennycook (Second Respondent), including unfair dismissal, equal pay, direct sex discrimination, associative disability discrimination, and other heads. The hearing took place at Manchester over August and October 2018 before a full panel.
The Tribunal found that the claimant was unfairly dismissed by the First Respondent, that her work was equal to that of her named comparators following a job evaluation study (with the material-factor defence failing), and that the respondents directly discriminated against her on the ground of sex in grading her 2015 performance as only 'partially achieved' without an adequate year-end appraisal. All other claims were dismissed, including a section-15 Equality Act 2010 complaint of associative disability discrimination which the Tribunal held it had no jurisdiction to consider on the basis that section 15 does not extend to associative claims of this kind. The parties were invited to seek to resolve the question of remedy between themselves, with the option of applying for a remedy hearing if they could not.
Claims and outcomes
5 claims adjudicated| Claim type | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unfair dismissal | Upheld | — | — |
| Equal pay | Upheld | — | — |
| Sex discrimination | Upheld | Sex | — |
| Disability discrimination | Dismissed | Disability | — |
| Other | Dismissed | — | — |
Legal tests applied
4 referencesSource document
Primary recordThe full judgment is available on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
How we got this data
Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.