Mr C Lindo v Hats Group Ltd — 2025

Mr Lindo worked for Hats Group Ltd as an ambulance driver/ACA based at Hillingdon Hospital. After a 15 August 2023 complaint email from a Trust employee alleging that he had verbally abused her at a petrol station and threatened to shoot her, the respondent carried out an investigation, held a disciplinary hearing, and summarily dismissed him on 19 September 2023. His appeal succeeded, but the respondent said Hillingdon would not allow him back on site and offered work at other sites instead; he declined that offer by email on 2 November 2023.

On the unfair dismissal claim, the tribunal held that the employment contract contained a mobility clause allowing the respondent to place the claimant at other locations or client sites, so there was no breach in moving him away from Hillingdon. Applying the authorities on reinstatement and constructive dismissal, including Savage and Folkestone, the tribunal found there was no actual dismissal because the successful appeal extinguished the original dismissal, and no constructive dismissal because the claimant had not resigned in response to any repudiatory breach. His 2 November 2023 email was treated as an unequivocal resignation, and the respondent’s failure to ask the Trust to reconsider did not change that outcome.

On direct race discrimination, the tribunal rejected the complaints about starting the investigation, the general conduct of the investigation, and Magda’s limited involvement. It upheld the complaints that the respondent failed to test the complainant’s evidence, did not obtain or consider available CCTV, accepted the untested allegation that the claimant had verbally abused the complainant, and dismissed him on 19 September 2023. The tribunal found that a tribunal could infer less favourable treatment because of race, including subconscious stereotyping, and that the respondent had not shown the treatment was in no sense whatsoever because of race. Remedy was left to a later hearing.