Colin Blakemore v SBD Apparel Ltd Heard in Sheffield — 2025

Employment Judge Ayre found that the claimant Colin Blakemore's complaints of direct race discrimination and harassment related to race against SBD Apparel Ltd were not well founded and were dismissed. The Tribunal accepted that the claimant's grievance had in fact been investigated (he had attended the grievance meeting) and that his comparator Mr Bashir Omar had not been investigated to a different standard.

In relation to the harassment complaint, the Tribunal found that an HR comment that 'Mr Bashir was a protected characteristic but the claimant is not' was related to race and was unwanted, but did not have the purpose or effect of creating a humiliating, degrading or offensive environment. It was a one-off slip of the tongue almost immediately corrected, and even if it had had the proscribed effect it would have been unreasonable for it to do so in context.

The respondent's costs application of £20,000 was refused. The judge held that the harassment claim had at least reasonable prospects of success (two of three elements of the test were made out), the costs warning letter had been sent only five days before the final hearing, and that the claimant was a litigant in person who had limited his claim to two specific allegations. Costs in the Employment Tribunal are still the exception. PDF text was truncated.