Ms S Bewley, Counsel. For the v Respondent — 2018

Ms R Emrys-Roberts brought unfair dismissal, age discrimination and sex discrimination claims arising from a redundancy-based restructure of Hertfordshire County Council's Countryside Management Service and Access and Rights of Way Service. She withdrew the age discrimination claim by email on 9 April 2019, leaving unfair dismissal and sex discrimination for determination. The tribunal's reasons record that the claimant had long experience as Definitive Map Team Leader and that the restructure eventually deleted that role and created a Team Leader Definitive Map & Enforcement post.

The tribunal upheld the unfair dismissal claim. It found that the respondent had not shown a potentially fair reason for dismissal under section 98 ERA 1996 because there was no redundancy situation in the statutory sense and no established SOSR reason. Even if there had been a potentially fair reason, the dismissal would still have been unfair under section 98(4): the tribunal found that the respondent did not properly consider slotting, did not complete the redundancy selection matrix required by its own policy, and had limited HR involvement. It also refused any Polkey deduction because the respondent had not shown the claimant would have been dismissed anyway had a fair procedure been followed.

The direct sex discrimination claim failed because the claimant had not established facts from which the tribunal could conclude that she was treated less favourably because of sex. The tribunal accepted that Tony Bradford sometimes talked over the claimant, but found he also talked over others, including men, and it held that the interview questions focused on management experience were asked of all candidates. The indirect sex discrimination claim also failed: the tribunal did not accept that the respondent had applied the alleged PCP of giving higher marks to answers about managing change that were not based on a collaborative approach, and it was not satisfied that women were shown to be at a particular disadvantage. No remedy was quantified in this judgment because the tribunal directed that remedy issues would be dealt with separately.