Mr Theo Lester, of counsel For the v Respondent — 2024

On 18 March 2020 the claimant, a police constable at Wembley police station, took AA's work mobile phone to Dunstable after AA asked her for it and DS Price supported the request. The tribunal preferred the claimant's contemporaneous 19 March 2020 email, her 31 March 2020 criminal statement and the text messages over a later section 9 statement from Mr Price, and found that AA arrived at the claimant's home off duty and had been drinking.

The tribunal held that AA's conduct at the claimant's home was not done in the course of his employment within section 109(1) Equality Act 2010. It accepted that the request involved a work phone and that AA and DS Price were senior to the claimant, but found that the claimant herself described the task as a favour, suggested that AA collect the phone from her home, invited him in because it was polite, and knew that he was off duty. On those facts, there was not a sufficient nexus with employment and a lay person would not regard the conduct as being in the course of employment.

If the conduct had been within the course of employment, the tribunal held that it would not have been just and equitable to extend time under section 123(1)(b). It found that by 21 August 2020, and in any event by April 2021, the claimant knew she could have brought an employment tribunal claim but chose instead to pursue police, grievance, union and solicitor routes. The tribunal took account of her mental health absences, the March 2023 DPS apology, and the fact that AA did not give evidence and had left the force in 2021, but concluded that these factors did not justify a claim presented on 11 July 2023 more than three years after the incident.