Case 3305729/2021 · Employment Tribunal

Ms D Patel v Simon Cooper and Co Ltd and 1 other — 2022

Case reference: 3305729/2021
Decision date: 2 December 2022
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Quill
Venue: Watford
Panel members: Ms C Buckland, Mr N Boustred

Indexed: 22 May 2026

Parties

3 named

Claimant

Ms D Patel

Respondents

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The tribunal found that the claimant's 4.37pm email was a protected disclosure. It upheld the protected disclosure detriment complaints in items 3b, 3c and 3d, while complaint 3a failed and was dismissed.

It also found that R1 actually dismissed the claimant on 5 January 2021, before 13:53, and that the principal reason for dismissal was the protected disclosure. On that basis the unfair dismissal complaint under section 103A ERA 1996 succeeded. The tribunal also found that the claimant was entitled to one week's notice and that dismissing her without notice was a breach of contract.

The complaint of harassment related to sex succeeded. In remedy, the tribunal treated the claimant's 4.37pm email as a grievance and held that R1 unreasonably failed to comply with the ACAS Code in relation to that grievance, so it applied a 10% uplift to the awards against the employer for unfair dismissal, breach of contract, protected disclosure detriment and harassment related to sex.

R1 was ordered to pay £13,426.26 in total. The breakdown was a nil basic award, a £3,053.05 compensatory award, £8,000 for injury to feelings, £174.46 for breach of contract, a £1,122.75 uplift, and £1,076 as two weeks' pay under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002. R2 was jointly and severally liable for the £8,000 injury-to-feelings sum.

Claims and outcomes

4 findings recorded

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Whistleblowing	The tribunal found the claimant's email was a protected disclosure and upheld detriment complaints 3b, 3c and 3d; detriment complaint 3a was dismissed. The judgment refers to the disclosure email as 4 January 2021 at 4.37pm in the liability section and 5 January 2021 at 4.37pm in the remedy section.	Upheld	—	—
Unfair dismissal	The tribunal found an actual dismissal by R1 on 5 January 2021, before 13:53, and held that the principal reason was the protected disclosure under section 103A ERA 1996. The basic award was nil and the compensatory award was £3,053.05 before the 10% uplift.	Upheld	—	£3,053
Breach of contract	The tribunal found the claimant was entitled to one week's notice and that R1 breached the contract by dismissing her without notice.	Upheld	—	£174
Harassment	The complaint of harassment related to sex succeeded. The judgment records an aggregate £8,000 injury-to-feelings sum and does not split that sum further between claims; R2 was jointly and severally liable for that amount.	Upheld	Sex	—

Remedy

Monetary award

Total award: £13,426; across all upheld claims
Basic award: £0; statutory, unfair dismissal
Compensatory award: £3,053; compensatory remedy recorded

Legal tests applied

4 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The 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.

Open official judgment PDF on gov.uk

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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