Ms M Kolade v Whittington Health NHS Trust — 2026

Employment Judge George heard the respondent's application to strike out the claimant's discrimination and victimisation complaints on time-limit grounds. The issue was whether conduct complained of before 12 April 2024 had no reasonable prospect of being shown to be part of conduct extending over a period ending on or after that date, so that the older matters would be out of time. The judgment concerned direct sex discrimination, direct race discrimination and victimisation allegations arising from repeated failure to appoint the claimant to Contracts and Materials Manager posts in 2019 and 2020, a later failure to appoint her to Sterile Services and Materials Manager on 19 April 2024, and grievance-related detriments in between.

The tribunal applied the usual caution on strike out in discrimination cases, referring to Rule 38, Anyanwu, Ezsias, Ahir, E v X and others, Hendricks, Lyfar and Aziz. It took the claimant's case at its highest, but it also critically reviewed the pleaded case and the contemporaneous documents. The judge noted that some grievance dates and grievance numbering in the list of issues appeared to be inconsistent with the documents, and that some grievance complaints did not map neatly onto the promotion complaints.

Even so, the tribunal was not satisfied that the respondent had shown no reasonable prospect of the claimant establishing a continuing act or ongoing state of affairs linking the earlier and later events. The judge considered that there was a realistic possibility that the pleaded case could be fleshed out to establish the necessary connection between the promotion refusals and the grievance outcomes. The respondent's strike out application was therefore refused, leaving the claims to proceed to a final hearing.