Case 2502576/2023 · Employment Tribunal
Michelle Hepburn v The Council of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne — 2024
- Case reference
- 2502576/2023
- Decision date
- 27 September 2024
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Loy Members
- Panel members
- D Sagar, S Moules
Parties
2 namedMichelle Hepburn
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningEmployment Judge Loy, sitting with members D Sagar and S Moules, gave a reserved judgment in which the tribunal dismissed all four of the claimant's claims arising out of the expiry and non-renewal of her one-year fixed-term contract as a Transport Assistant at Newcastle City Council. The reasonable adjustments and victimisation claims under the Equality Act 2010 were dismissed by majority (with one dissent each); the whistleblowing detriment claim under s.47B ERA 1996 and the automatic unfair dismissal claim under s.103A ERA 1996 were dismissed unanimously.
Applying the test in Fecitt to causation, the tribunal concluded that the reason the claimant's probation was extended was solely because of genuine, objective concerns about her performance, and that Nicola Jones (the relevant manager) was not influenced in any way by the protected disclosures. The tribunal found that the reason the fixed-term contract was not renewed (the operative dismissal under s.95(1)(b) ERA 1996) was that the respondent had no ongoing operational need for either a temporary or permanent Transport Assistant when the contract expired on 31 August 2023.
The PDF was truncated at 15,000 of 156,145 characters; the full reasoning on the reasonable adjustments and victimisation claims, and the dissenting members' reasoning, were not in the extracted portion.
Claims and outcomes
4 claims adjudicated| Claim type | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disability discrimination | Dismissed | Disability | — |
| Victimisation | Dismissed | — | — |
| Whistleblowing | Dismissed | — | — |
| Unfair dismissal | Dismissed | — | — |
Legal tests applied
7 referencesSource document
Primary recordThe full judgment is available 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.