Ms R Basra v University of East London — 2022

Ms Basra, a British Indian woman employed by the University of East London from September 2015, brought claims of race discrimination, sex discrimination, race-related harassment, sex-related harassment and victimisation. At the outset of the judgment the tribunal recorded that the breach of contract complaint had been withdrawn, and it also recorded withdrawal of some individual allegations within the wider discrimination claims. The tribunal heard evidence over eight days and then reconvened for deliberations in January and February 2023.

The tribunal found Ms Basra genuinely believed her allegations but had significant reliability problems on several issues, with contemporaneous emails and documents often contradicting her account. By contrast, it found UEL's witnesses generally reliable. On the facts, the tribunal accepted that Ms Basra received mentoring and support during her probation, that the first probation review took place after about five months in line with policy, and that the only procedural omission was that probation objectives had not been set at the outset. That omission was not shown to be because of race.

Most of the race discrimination allegations were rejected because the tribunal found either that the incident did not occur as alleged, did not amount to a detriment, or had a straightforward non-discriminatory explanation. Those findings covered matters such as module allocation, Write Now, meeting invitations, workload, holiday scheduling, research funding, and the later allocation of dissertation supervision and module leadership. The tribunal also rejected the race harassment claim, including allegations about student hostility, comments about Ms Blakemore, room conditions, car damage and the peer-review email in 2021, holding that there was no sufficient race-related link and, where conduct was proved, it did not meet the section 26 threshold.

The sex discrimination claim also failed. The tribunal found that Professor Robertshaw's failure to respond to the 19 September 2018 email and the request for an extra working day was explained by workload and the lack of clarity in the email, not sex. In the sex harassment claim, the only proven matter was a delay in reimbursing a theatre-ticket expense claim for £90; the tribunal held that this looked like an administrative delay and was not capable of amounting to harassment in the circumstances.

The victimisation claim failed because the tribunal accepted that only three protected acts were established: the grievance alleging discrimination against Helena Blakemore, the grievance alleging discrimination against Professor Robertshaw on 4 June 2019, and the 27 November 2020 tribunal claim. It found no causal connection between those protected acts and the alleged detriments in the grievance process, appeal handling or later management decisions. The tribunal also said that most allegations were out of time under section 123 EqA 2010 and, in any event, would not have justified a just and equitable extension. All remaining complaints were dismissed and no financial award was made.