Mr Joseph Johnson v Rights And Equalities in Newham and 1 other — 2021

Mr Joseph Johnson was employed on a one-year fixed-term contract on the Everyone’s Business Community Project. The tribunal found that he was 39 at appointment, that one of the three other project workers, Mo Ford, was 37, and that Nicholas Oyeniyi and Tosin Agbeji were significantly younger. It rejected the claimant’s premise that all of the comparators were in a much younger age bracket, and found Mo Ford was not a suitable comparator.

On the discrimination claim, the tribunal found that Mr Leslie’s email stating that the claimant’s lack of information was impacting the project was not false, because the claimant’s performance was in fact delaying the project and he had not produced the required list of grass-roots organisations. The tribunal also rejected the suggestion that Mr Leslie’s emails of 10 and 12 June 2020 showed hostility, finding instead that he had repeatedly tried to support the claimant and was concerned about progress and performance. It held that age was not the reason for the treatment complained of, including the dismissal, which it said resulted from performance concerns and the claimant’s refusal to attend a face-to-face meeting to address them.

The victimisation claim failed because, although the tribunal said the 12 June 2020 email to HR was potentially a protected act, it found that no-one in HR saw it and Mr Leslie did not receive it before dismissal. The respondents therefore did not know, and had no reason to believe, that the claimant had done or may do a protected act when he was dismissed.

The harassment claim also failed. The tribunal accepted that Mr Leslie required the claimant to attend a face-to-face meeting and that the dismissal was unwanted conduct, but found that neither related to age and that neither violated the claimant’s dignity nor created an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The tribunal dismissed all three claims and noted that the dismissal was not handled in accordance with principles of fairness or the respondent’s disciplinary policy, but emphasised that unfair dismissal was not the claim before it.