Case 3201216/2020 · Employment Tribunal
Mrs J Copley v Rochford District Council — 2021
- Case reference
- 3201216/2020
- Decision date
- 25 October 2021
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Moor Members
- Panel members
- Mr S Woodhouse, Mr J Webb
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Mrs J Copley
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningMrs J Copley had worked for Rochford District Council since 1991 and was in the Housing Options team when six colleagues raised a collective grievance in June 2019 about her conduct, including sharing racist material, bullying behaviour, and spreading mistruths. Ms Law investigated the grievance, interviewed the complainants, and found their accounts credible. The tribunal accepted that the grievance was properly treated as formal because of the number and seriousness of the complaints, and that the claimant went off sick with anxiety and depression from 1 July 2019; the respondent accepted she was disabled from 8 July 2019 and knew or ought reasonably to have known that by 29 August 2019 after the occupational health report.
Claims and outcomes
4 findings recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Disability discrimination | Included the alleged discriminatory dismissal and the complaint about HR contact during sickness absence. | Dismissed | Disability | — |
| Unfair dismissal | Recorded from the judgment. | Dismissed | — | — |
| Age discrimination | Direct age discrimination alleged in relation to dismissal. | Dismissed | Age | — |
| Other | Failure to make reasonable adjustments claim, including deadlines for written responses and the timing of the disciplinary hearing. | Dismissed | Disability | — |
Legal tests applied
10 references- s.98(1) and (2) ERA 1996
- s.98(4) ERA 1996
- range of reasonable responses
- Iceland Frozen Foods v Jones
- Sandwell and W Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust v Westwood
- Sainsbury's Supermarkets v Hitt
- Polkey question
- section 13 Equality Act 2010
- section 39 Equality Act 2010
- reasonable adjustments duty under Equality Act 2010
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe 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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