Case 6001281/2024 · Employment Tribunal

Mr J Cowling v Royal Mail Group Limited — 2024

Case reference: 6001281/2024
Decision date: 11 December 2024
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Bright Date

Indexed: 25 April 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Mr J Cowling

Respondent

Royal Mail Group Limited

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

Mr J Cowling brought multiple complaints against Royal Mail Group Limited, including unauthorised deductions from wages, discrimination arising from disability, failure to make reasonable adjustments, direct age discrimination, and several allegations of direct disability discrimination. Following a preliminary hearing on 10 December 2024, the claimant had been ordered on 11 December 2024 to pay a deposit of £50 per allegation (£350 total) under deposit orders.

The claimant paid £100, attributed to the allegations of direct disability discrimination at items 1.5 (Philip Wilmhurst on 19 December 2023) and 1.6 (Ateeq Rafiq's referral to occupational health on/around March 2024). The remaining allegations (1.1 unauthorised deductions, 1.2 discrimination arising from disability, 1.3 failure to make reasonable adjustments, 1.4 direct age discrimination, and 1.7 direct disability discrimination on/around 18 March 2024 by Richard Matthews) were struck out under Rule 40(4) of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 for non-payment of the relevant deposits.

Employment Judge Bright recorded that the complaints for which deposits had been paid would proceed to a hearing on 2, 3 and 4 June 2025.

Claims and outcomes

4 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Unlawful deduction from wages	Unauthorised deductions from wages allegation (1.1 in the deposit order) struck out under Rule 40(4) Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 for non-payment of the £50 deposit ordered after a preliminary hearing.	Struck out	—	—
Disability discrimination	Discrimination arising from disability (1.2), failure to make reasonable adjustments (1.3), and direct disability discrimination on/around 18 March 2024 by Richard Matthews regarding occupational health advice on ill-health retirement (1.7) all struck out under Rule 40(4) for non-payment of the relevant deposits.	Struck out	Disability	—
Age discrimination	Direct age discrimination (1.4) struck out under Rule 40(4) Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 for non-payment of the £50 deposit.	Struck out	Age	—
Disability discrimination	Direct disability discrimination allegations 1.5 (Philip Wilmhurst on 19 December 2023) and 1.6 (Ateeq Rafiq referring claimant to occupational health on/around March 2024) proceed to a hearing on 2, 3 and 4 June 2025 because the £100 deposit was paid for these allegations.	Other	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

1 reference

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How we got this data

Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.

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