In person For the v Respondent — 2022

The Claimant joined the Respondent on 29 October 2018 and was dismissed for redundancy on 22 June 2020. The tribunal noted that he did not have sufficient service to bring an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, so the case proceeded as direct race discrimination and race harassment. It found that the Claimant's request for TRIZ training was not progressed because Dr Cross neglected the matter, and later because cost and training restrictions came to dominate the Respondent's approach, not because of race.

The tribunal also found that the redundancy selection and consultation process contained avoidable errors, but that the Claimant was in a stand-alone role and would have been selected for redundancy in any event because the other employees he identified were out of scope by reason of service length. The redundancy appeal was handled unfairly and contrary to the Respondent's policies, but the tribunal concluded that the failings were due to error, poor process, and the pressures on Ms Lyall, rather than race.

On the harassment allegations in January 2020, the tribunal found that Mr Marshall's email of 15 January 2020, Dr Cross's failure to take the matter further, and Ms Smith's comments on 23 and 24 January 2020 were unwanted and, in Ms Smith's case, humiliating, but they were not related to the Claimant's race. The allegation that Ms Smith said the Claimant was black was not proved. Applying the burden of proof approach and the harassment test, the tribunal held that these complaints were not well founded.

The Claimant's complaint succeeded only in relation to the events of 23 June 2020, when he went to collect his belongings and the Respondent called the police to remove him. The tribunal found that he was agitated but not aggressive, that senior managers escalated the matter without adequate explanation, and that Mr Beckwith did not attend to explain his decision. It inferred that the Claimant had been stereotyped as a black male aggressor and held that the police call amounted to harassment related to race. The case was listed for a remedy hearing, with no monetary award determined in this judgment.