Case 2418114/2018 · Employment Tribunal

Mr P.R. Hughes v Halton Borough Council — 2019

Case reference: 2418114/2018
Decision date: 15 November 2019
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge T. Vincent Ryan

Indexed: 21 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Mr P.R. Hughes

Respondent

Halton Borough Council

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

At a preliminary hearing on 24 October 2019 before Employment Judge T. Vincent Ryan, the tribunal found that Mr P.R. Hughes was a disabled person within section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 by virtue only of anxiety and depression. It also found that Halton Borough Council did not know, and could not reasonably have known, that he was disabled until it received an occupational health report dated 14 June 2018 from Colette Hornsby.

The respondent's application for the claimant's unfair dismissal and disability discrimination claims to be struck out as having no reasonable prospect of success was dismissed upon withdrawal. The tribunal further held that the claims had some reasonable prospect of succeeding, so it could not be said without hearing evidence and finding facts that they had little reasonable prospect of success for the purposes of a deposit order.

This was a preliminary ruling only. The judgment records no final liability decision on the substantive unfair dismissal or disability discrimination claims and no monetary remedy was awarded.

Claims and outcomes

2 findings recorded

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Unfair dismissal	Preliminary hearing only; the respondent's strike-out application in relation to this claim was dismissed upon withdrawal, and the tribunal held the claim had some reasonable prospect of success. No final merits determination was made.	Other	—	—
Disability discrimination	Preliminary hearing only; the tribunal found the claimant was a disabled person by reason only of anxiety and depression, and that the respondent did not know and could not reasonably have known of the disability until 14 June 2018. No final merits determination was made.	Other	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

3 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published 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.

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