Mr P S Bhogal v The Council of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne — 2022

The tribunal dismissed Mr P S Bhogal's direct race discrimination claims against the Council of the City of Newcastle Upon Tyne. It held that the first claim about the October 2019 Senior EP-INA vacancy was in time because it formed part of a continuing series of events ending with the July 2020 recruitment exercise, but the claim failed on the merits. The tribunal applied sections 13, 123 and 136 of the Equality Act 2010 and referred to Igen v Wong, Madarassy, Shamoon and Robertson.

In relation to the October 2019 post, the tribunal accepted that the vacancy was withdrawn and then reconfigured into three higher-paid Senior EP posts. It found the withdrawal was driven by salary, regrading and the desire to widen the field of candidates, not by race. In the July 2020 recruitment, it found the interview panel and questions were reasonable and applied equally, that the claimant was given the same preparation and interview time as the other candidates, and that Andrew Scott was appointed because he was the better candidate on the day; Mr Scott scored 79 and the claimant scored 60.5. The tribunal also rejected the challenge to the panel composition.

The tribunal dismissed the allegations of excessive scrutiny of the claimant's psychological advices. It found that there was no live claim before it in respect of the 2012 IPR, that the 2015 IPR and later complaints about proofreading, support and training were largely unsupported assertions, and that the respondent had legitimate concerns about the quality of the claimant's reports. It found that decisions about support, proofreading and training were made for non-racial reasons. The tribunal also found that one sentence in an email sent on 20 August 2020 was unwanted conduct related to race and would have violated dignity, but the claimant had not pleaded that incident and did not seek amendment. Because all claims failed, the tribunal did not list a remedy hearing.