Mr Hassan Hassan v Per his Written Representations Department for Work and Pensions — 2023

This was an expenses/preliminary hearing held in chambers on the papers only. The ET1 presented on 26 August 2022 alleged discrimination on the grounds of race and religion or belief, but no evidence had been led and the tribunal made no findings in fact on the merits of those claims. The judgment dealt only with the claimant’s opposed application for a preparation time order and left his Rule 50 anonymisation/privacy application for later determination after further written representations.

The claimant sought a preparation time order for £318.85, made up of £108.85 said to represent a pro rata day of salary and £210 for about five hours of preparation. The respondents objected that none of the grounds in Rule 76 were met, that their withdrawn Rule 10 application to reject the claim had been a permissible legal point, and that the claimant had not shown any actual loss of salary or a proper basis for payment for hearing attendance.

The Employment Judge applied Rules 74 to 84, including the requirement in Rule 79 to assess reasonable and proportionate preparation time, and considered McPherson v BNP Paribas, Barnsley MBC v Yerrakalva, and Andrew v Eden College. He held that withdrawing the Rule 10 application did not, by itself, show unreasonable conduct or that the application had no reasonable prospects of success. He also noted that the claimant had received more than two weeks’ notice that the preliminary hearing was discharged, so the respondents had not acted unreasonably, abusively, disruptively or vexatiously.

The tribunal concluded that the claimant’s request for five hours was disproportionate and insufficiently explained, and that there was no clear evidence of lost salary. It therefore refused the preparation time order. The judgment was issued on 20 March 2023 and entered in the register on 21 March 2023; the privacy/anonymity issue was continued to a later date.