Mrs Suzanne Jeffreys v Taylor Davenport Resourcing Limited — 2024

This was an interim relief hearing arising from the claimant's claim that her dismissal was automatically unfair because it was for protected disclosures under s103A ERA. The tribunal noted that interim relief is not available for the Equality Act discrimination claims, and that the task was only to make a summary assessment of whether the claimant was likely to succeed at a full hearing. It applied the statutory 'likely to succeed' test and the authorities on interim relief, emphasising that it was not making final findings of fact.

The claimant said she had made 18 protected disclosures between January 2023 and 24 September 2024, said to concern payroll being processed as expenses and related tax consequences. The tribunal was not persuaded that she had disclosed information in the statutory sense. It noted the lack of contemporaneous written complaints, the absence of supporting material showing factual and specific whistleblowing disclosures, and the fact that the emails relied on around March and April 2024 appeared to concern access to the Brightpay/accounting system rather than complaints about criminality or tax irregularity.

The tribunal was also not persuaded that the claimant had a reasonable belief that the respondent was committing a criminal act, or that the dismissal was caused by protected disclosures. It accepted the respondent's explanation that the pay issue was an administrative error that was corrected once raised, and noted evidence that the claimant had not complained about payslip issues to the respondent or to Oak Accountancy Solutions. It also treated the redundancy explanation as credible, including the stated absence of new clients in England and Wales since November 2022, no new placements since April 2022, and client changes affecting the respondent's ability to place work.

The result was that the claimant was found to fall well below the threshold of a 'pretty good chance of success' on the s103A claim, so interim relief was refused. The judgment also recorded that the tribunal was not persuaded by the claimant's reliance on good faith or public interest at this stage, but the central reasons for refusal were the failure to establish protected disclosures, reasonable belief, and causation.