Mr M P Sutcliffe v Crown Prosecution Service — 2019

The claimant was employed by the Crown Prosecution Service as a caseworker from December 2001 until July 2018. He brought complaints of victimisation and failure to make reasonable adjustments arising from grievance, disciplinary and absence-management processes. The respondent accepted that his grievance of 22 June 2017, which alleged unlawful discrimination, was a protected act, and conceded that the claimant was disabled at relevant times by depression and anxiety. The claimant did not bring complaints about his dismissal in these proceedings.

The tribunal upheld victimisation issue 2(1). It found that Howard Gough's decision, while investigating the grievance, to call for and examine the claimant's timesheets for July to October 2017 was not an obvious line of enquiry and subjected the claimant to detriment because it led to a formal disciplinary investigation and required him to account for his time much later. The tribunal accepted that Mr Gough had reason to consider the claimant's motivation, but inferred from the report, the different treatment of the claimant's and Julie Winstanley's evidence, the thorough timesheet enquiry compared with the grievance enquiry, and inconsistencies in Mr Gough's explanation that the protected act had a significant influence on that decision.

Victimisation issue 2(2), concerning Sue Dziegiel's decision to commission a formal disciplinary investigation, was dismissed. Although the protected act was known to her and Mr Gough's recommendation was a factor, the tribunal accepted that she also relied on HR advice that identified anomalies should be looked into, and found no evidence that her decision was motivated by the protected act. Victimisation issue 2(4), concerning extensive contact with the claimant and his wife between 20 December 2017 and 14 April 2018, was also dismissed: the tribunal found the correspondence arose from three internal processes, and that out-of-hours emails were sent because managers were working outside normal hours to deal with matters in a timely way. Victimisation issues 2(3), 2(5) and 2(6) were withdrawn and dismissed on withdrawal.

The tribunal dismissed reasonable adjustments complaints FP1, FP2 and FP3. It found that the respondent applied the PCPs alleged in relation to allocating Chris Marr as HRBP for the absence-management process, expecting employees and former employees to deal with MyCSP themselves, and considering redeployment only within the CPS. However, in each instance the tribunal found that the PCP did not place the claimant at the pleaded substantial disadvantage compared with a person without his disability, and also found in the alternative or additionally that the respondent did not have the required knowledge of disadvantage.

The tribunal upheld reasonable adjustments complaint FP4. It treated the complaint broadly as concerning the respondent telling the claimant that his 21 May 2018 complaint should first be raised with Sue Dziegiel, who was named in that complaint. The tribunal found that this PCP placed the claimant, who had anxiety and depression, at a substantial disadvantage, that the respondent ought to have known this, and that appointing an independent person at a higher level than the people to be investigated would have been a reasonable adjustment. No compensation was determined in this judgment; a remedy hearing was listed for 22 October 2019.