Case 6019968/2025 · Employment Tribunal

Mr P Shuttleworth v Cabinet Office and 1 other — 2025

Case reference: 6019968/2025
Decision date: 18 August 2025
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge E Burns
Venue: London Central

Indexed: 18 May 2026

Parties

3 named

Claimant

Mr P Shuttleworth

Respondents

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The judgment concerned a preliminary hearing about whether complaints in the claimant's fifth employment tribunal claim should be struck out as an abuse of process, together with case management. The tribunal heard no evidence and stated that it was not making findings of fact intended to bind the tribunal at any final hearing.

The claimant's claims related to civil service recruitment processes and the alleged use of terms such as 'digital native' or 'social media native', which he said amounted to age discrimination. The tribunal held that no complaints against the Civil Service Commission could proceed because they were outside the tribunal's jurisdiction, and that it had no jurisdiction over complaints under section 60A Equality Act 2010.

The tribunal permitted only the complaints against the Cabinet Office set out in the attached list of issues to proceed, including direct age discrimination, indirect age discrimination and victimisation issues concerning the Senior Digital Communications Officer role. The remaining complaints either could not proceed for jurisdictional reasons or were struck out as an abuse of process.

Claims and outcomes

5 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
Age discrimination	Preliminary judgment only. The tribunal held that the direct age discrimination complaint against R1 concerning CO Role 3 could proceed; the merits were not determined.	Other	Age	—
Age discrimination	Preliminary judgment only. The tribunal held that the indirect age discrimination complaint against R1 concerning the use of 'Social Media Native' and/or 'Digital Native' in job adverts or specifications could proceed; the merits were not determined.	Other	Age	—
Victimisation	Preliminary judgment only. The tribunal held that the victimisation complaint or complaints against R1 identified in the attached list of issues could proceed; the merits were not determined.	Other	—	—
Other	The tribunal held that no complaints against R2 could proceed because they were outside the tribunal's jurisdiction, and that it had no jurisdiction in relation to any complaint under section 60A Equality Act 2010.	Other	—	—
Other	The tribunal stated that remaining complaints either could not proceed because they were outside jurisdiction or were struck out as an abuse of process. The truncated prompt does not identify every remaining complaint.	Struck out	—	—

Legal tests applied

7 references

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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