Mrs H Parker v Neerock Limited — 2024

Mrs H Parker, a People Assistant aged 52 when she started and 53 when her employment ended, brought claims of direct and indirect age discrimination against Neerock Limited. The tribunal heard evidence about the allocation of work and meetings, mentor arrangements, site visits, a pause in absence-review meetings, and her unsuccessful application for a People Advisor role. It found that there had been some differences in treatment between the claimant and KS, who was younger, but that the direct claim required proof that those differences were because of age.

On the direct age discrimination complaint, the tribunal rejected the age link for each pleaded allegation. It found that the failure to allocate a mentor at the outset was less favourable treatment, but the claimant had not shown the additional facts needed to shift the burden of proof. When she asked Ms Stott for a mentor on 13 April 2023, the tribunal accepted that the failure to act was an oversight rather than age-related treatment. It reached the same conclusion on the complaints about limited work allocation, the greater number and variety of meetings involving KS, the mentoring meetings, the site visits, the pause in People Assistants conducting absence-review meetings, and the recruitment issue, which the tribunal attributed to an administrative error rather than age.

For indirect age discrimination, the tribunal identified the People Management graduate scheme eligibility rule requiring applicants to be undertaking a degree or to have graduated within the previous two years as the relevant PCP. It accepted that this rule placed older workers, including those in their fifties, at a group disadvantage. However, the claim failed because Mrs Parker did not show individual disadvantage: she had not applied for the scheme, and simply reading the criteria on the website was not enough. The tribunal accepted that the respondent's stated aims were legitimate, but said that, had it needed to decide proportionality, a blanket two-year rule would not have been a proportionate means of achieving those aims. Because both claims failed, the tribunal did not need to decide the limitation issue.