: K Culloch Mrs A Shanahan Mr MD Rezaur Rahman v Common Thread Ltd — 2018

The claimant, Mr MD Rezaur Rahman, worked as a therapeutic care worker in children's homes operated by Common Thread Limited. The tribunal accepted that he was repeatedly subjected to vile racist abuse and later homophobic abuse by young people in the homes, and it accepted that two disclosures of his sexual orientation to residents were inadvertent rather than deliberate. It also found that the respondent's managers used a therapeutic approach based on SCM training, supervision and escalation routes, and that the claimant had been trained to deal with abuse in that framework.

The race and sexual orientation discrimination claims were dismissed. Applying the reasoning in Unite the Union v Nailard and Sheffield City Council v Norouzi, the tribunal focused on the respondent's own acts and omissions rather than the conduct of third parties. It found that the respondent had a coherent system for dealing with abusive behaviour, that the claimant generally said he could cope with it, and that there was no evidence the respondent's response, or lack of further action, was because of race or sexual orientation. On the sexual orientation issue, the tribunal accepted the evidence that the disclosures were accidental and not motivated by hostility, which took the case outside discrimination on that ground.

The unlawful deduction of wages claim succeeded in relation to the £650 insurance-excess deduction made from the claimant's final pay. The tribunal held that the contractual deduction clause did not satisfy section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 because the claimant had not been given the necessary written notification of the effect of the provision, had not been told the amount of the excess, and had not been shown that the debt had been properly established before the deduction was made. The claimant had accepted the separate deduction for training fees, so the only sum ordered to be repaid was £650.