Miss C Kelly, counsel For the v Respondent — 2025

Mrs Bhullar, a Band 7 Specialist Physiotherapist in the Trust's STS&R team, brought unfair dismissal, race discrimination and victimisation claims arising from the breakdown of her working relationship with her line manager, Julia Prince, and the later grievance and capability process. Earlier sex discrimination, protected disclosure detriment, automatic unfair dismissal and part-time worker detriment claims had been withdrawn. The tribunal heard extensive evidence about the 2017-2018 dispute over working days, the 10 April 2018 email about concerns relayed by the Optalis operational manager, the 2019 grievance process, the later SOPs agreed with Optalis, and the 2021 capability process that ended in dismissal.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was some other substantial reason: Mrs Bhullar was not prepared to return to her substantive role, would not accept the alternative Band 6 role, and would not accept that the Trust had done all it reasonably could to resolve her concerns. It held that the Trust had made sensible and genuine efforts to repair the situation, including mediation attempts, grievance and appeal steps, revised working-practice and raising-concerns SOPs, redeployment options, a change of line manager, and independent managers handling the dismissal and appeal. On that basis the dismissal fell within the range of reasonable responses and the unfair dismissal claim was dismissed.

On race discrimination, the tribunal rejected the pleaded incidents individually. It accepted that Julia Prince should have checked the facts before sending the 10 April 2018 email and that Jenny Plummer was not neutral at the March 2019 meeting, but it found those acts were not because of race. The November 2017 working-days issue was found to have been driven by the perceived fairness of the job-share arrangement rather than race; the frailty-course invitation was an administrative oversight; the grievance-handling complaints were not race-based; Helen Williamson's appeal outcome adequately addressed the handover issue; and the 2021 further investigation and dismissal process were not racially motivated.

On victimisation, the tribunal refused the proposed amendment to add an April 2019 protected act and proceeded on the admitted protected act in the 17 March 2021 grievance. It held that Ms Toheed's April 2019 comments did not amount to discouraging a grievance and that the later fact-find and continued-employment process were not taken because of the protected act. The victimisation claim was therefore dismissed.