Miss S Veitch Miss N Sobihy v Stessa Leisure Holdings Limited — 2018

The tribunal found that, in about mid-October 2018, Mr Whitelaw told Miss Veitch that he was surprised Mr Thompson had women in management, that the Adam he knew would never have women in management roles, and that Miss Veitch and the two other female general managers "just ramble on and are too emotional" in meetings and "go off on a tangent". It held that those comments were unwanted conduct related to sex and created a hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for Miss Veitch. Miss Sobihy learned of the comments on 5 November 2018, when she also learned that Mr Whitelaw would conduct interviews for the new roles, and the tribunal found that the same comments also amounted to harassment of her.

The tribunal separately upheld Miss Veitch's harassment complaint about Mr Whitelaw's private Facebook message sent in the early hours of 10 November 2018, which commented on her appearance and, by implication, that of her partner. It found the message was related to sex, that it was unwanted, and that it was reasonable for it to have the effect found because Mr Whitelaw was senior to Miss Veitch and in a position to influence decisions about her career.

On Miss Veitch's direct sex discrimination claim about selection for redundancy from the general manager role, the tribunal accepted that the respondent's plan to create a telesales team was genuine and financially motivated. It found, however, that this did not fully explain why the existing general manager posts were made redundant and replaced with club manager roles that were in substance the same roles with sales responsibilities removed. In light of Mr Whitelaw's comments, his involvement in the restructure, the short timetable, the absence of job descriptions, the respondent's false representation that appointments would be made using a selection matrix, and the appointment of three men to the club manager posts, the respondent had not proved that the decision was in no sense whatsoever because of sex.

Miss Veitch's unfair dismissal claim was upheld. The tribunal found that her dismissal was not wholly or mainly attributable to redundancy: after she asked for and was given a new head of retentions role, the principal reason for dismissal was that she was unhappy working with Mr Whitelaw after he had harassed her and was given the opportunity to leave with a redundancy payment. The tribunal accepted that this could in principle be some other substantial reason, but held that the respondent acted unreasonably because it did not conduct an impartial investigation, Mr Evans' investigation was perfunctory, he deterred escalation to HR by saying it could get "messy", and he pressured Miss Veitch to decide quickly.

Miss Veitch's direct sex discrimination claim about dismissal and her victimisation claims were dismissed. The tribunal found that a male employee who complained of harassment by Mr Whitelaw would have been treated in the same way, and that requiring Miss Veitch to work notice from Stockton was not detrimental treatment and was not because of her protected act. It was not persuaded that Mr Evans told her that her redundancy pay would be reduced if she did not work her notice.