Mr P. Baptiste v Royal Mail Group Ltd RECORD OF A PRELIMINARY HEARING IN PUBLIC — 2025

At a preliminary hearing in Reading on 7 August 2025, Employment Judge McNeill KC, sitting alone, struck out the claimant's constructive unfair dismissal claim under rule 38 of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024. The judge held that claim had no reasonable prospect of success. The respondent's application to strike out the case for unreasonable conduct was refused. The judge accepted there had been unreasonable conduct, including irrelevant and sometimes very personal comments in documents sent to individual employees in what purported to be witness summonses, but did not exercise the discretion to strike the claim out on that basis.

The order permitted the claimant's remaining claims to proceed to a full hearing. Those claims were unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, direct race, sex and age discrimination, victimisation, holiday pay, notice pay, and breach of contract limited to unpaid contractual overtime between 13 January and 16 March 2023 and 23 October and 22 December 2023. The discrimination allegations were grouped around the alleged assault by Richard Ashwood on 13 December 2022 and the respondent's handling of it, suspension, disciplinary meetings on 2 and 8 November 2023 and 20 December 2023 held in the claimant's absence, a change to duty paperwork in June 2023, complaints against Ms Sinclair in January 2023, Lise Brewster's referral of those complaints back to Ms Sinclair, and dismissal.

The victimisation claim was said to arise from the claimant's complaint that Ms Sinclair discriminated against him in Employment Tribunal case no. 3311695/2022, with the detriments being the same matters relied on for the direct discrimination claims. This was a procedural record only, so the tribunal did not decide liability or award compensation on the claims that were allowed to continue. The record was approved on 7 August 2025 and sent to the parties on 10 September 2025.