Dr M Krysmann v University of Central Lancashire — 2022

Dr Krysmann, a Lecturer and later Senior Lecturer in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, brought claims of pregnancy and maternity discrimination, sex discrimination, race discrimination and victimisation arising from 34 allegations about maternity cover, workload allocation, stress risk assessment, comments in meetings, emails, grievance handling, annual leave and REF-related matters. The Tribunal heard liability only and unanimously dismissed all claims. It held that the respondent's decisions were generally driven by finance, course changes, workload management, office reorganisation, or administrative delay, rather than the protected characteristics relied upon.

The Tribunal accepted that the claimant's return from maternity leave was handled poorly in a number of respects. It found that Professor Davidson decided not to proceed with the advertised maternity-cover post for financial reasons and to fund a different lecturer role instead. It also found that Professor Forbes failed to plan the claimant's workload properly for her return and the new academic year, and that there was a significant delay in arranging the claimant's stress risk assessment. Some treatment was found to be unfavourable, including the delay in the stress risk assessment and remarks made at the meetings on 16 and 26 November 2018, but the Tribunal held that none of those matters was shown to be because of pregnancy or maternity, sex or race.

Later complaints about the 'little paper' comment, the open access funding discussion, the disciplinary complaint, the office move proposal, the phased return email, the visiting professorship, annual leave, student messages and the REF issue were also rejected. The Tribunal found that some of the conduct was inappropriate, unreasonable or poorly handled, and it found that the grievance process was prolonged and did not follow the respondent's procedure in every respect. Even so, it held that the claimant had not proved the necessary link to sex, race, pregnancy or maternity, and had not proved that the complained-of treatment was because she had done a protected act. The majority dismissed the victimisation allegations about the 10 September 2019 email and the May, June and July 2019 emails seeking disciplinary action; Dr Tirohl dissented on those two allegations, but the final result remained dismissal of the victimisation claim.

No remedy was awarded because none of the claims succeeded. The Tribunal recorded that, had it needed to consider time limits, it might well have found it just and equitable to extend time, but that issue did not need to be decided after the dismissal of the substantive claims.