Ms J Bryan v London Borough of Redbridge — 2023

The tribunal held that the claimant was dismissed for redundancy following a restructuring of the Housing Needs Service and the deletion of her Housing Options Advisor role. It rejected the age discrimination and harassment complaints. In particular, it found that the equality impact assessments did not support an inference that relevant decision-makers were influenced by age, and it accepted the respondent's explanations for the matters complained of.

On the harassment allegations, the tribunal found that the claimant was not given an appeal hearing after her initial appeal, was not offered training in January 2020, and was asked while on sick leave in August and September 2020 to engage with training and a further interview process. It found those August and September 2020 communications were unwanted and created an intimidating environment, but not one related to age. Other allegations, including lack of support after her March 2021 return, failure to slot her into a role, insufficient notice of interview, and dismissal itself, were rejected.

The unfair dismissal claim succeeded on procedural grounds. The tribunal found that, after the claimant's successful appeal in December 2019, she had been promised at least ten weeks of training and support before any further competitive interview, but the respondent did not follow that plan when arranging training and inviting her to interview in May 2021. That failure took the process outside the band of reasonable responses. The tribunal concluded that a fair employer would have delayed the interview by four weeks, but that the claimant would inevitably still have been dismissed four weeks later. It made no reduction for contributory conduct.