ETZ 4(WR) IN THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAL (SCOTLAND) AT EDINBURGH Judgment of the Employment Tribunal in Case No: 8000146/2023 Issued Following Open Preliminary Hearing Heard at Edinburgh on the th of September 2023 Employment Judge J G d’Inverno Ms Vaneeza Abbas v ISS Facility Services Limited — 2023

This was an open preliminary hearing to determine the claimant's application for leave to amend her ET1. The original claim included complaints described as direct sex discrimination, sexual harassment, holiday pay, arrears of pay and other payments, but those substantive claims were not decided in this judgment.

The proposed amendment concerned pay increases in 2022 and the claimant's contention that her April 2022 increase should have matched or included the later increase applied in October 2022. The Tribunal found that the proposed amendment did not set out a discernible statutory or factual basis for a claim, despite earlier case management orders requiring that information.

Applying the amendment principles, the Tribunal considered the proposed amendment to be a significant new cause of action based on new facts, not a relabelling of existing pleaded matters. It found that, whether understood as an unauthorised deduction from wages claim or as a sex discrimination claim, the proposed complaint was out of time, no sufficient basis had been shown for extending time, and the proposed claim had no reasonable prospect of success. Balancing the relative injustice and hardship, the Tribunal refused leave to amend. The case was to proceed to its already listed final hearing on the existing claims.