Member Ms E Coyle Tribunal Member Ms P Fallow Ms S Kellington-Craword v Newlands Care Angus Ltd — 2025

The claimant, an English care assistant promoted to senior care assistant in October 2022, brought claims including age and race discrimination, harassment, victimisation, whistleblowing detriment and dismissal, unlawful deduction from wages, and holiday pay. The tribunal extended time for the discrimination claims on a just and equitable basis under section 123 EqA 2010, applying the Keeble and DPP v Marshall factors, because the delay beyond the primary time limit was short, the claimant gave credible reasons, and the key events were well documented.

All age discrimination complaints failed. The tribunal found that the claimant's proposed comparators were not materially the same because they had different qualifications and/or experience, and there was no evidence that the respondent had any issue with her age. The complaints about the timing of promotion, being asked to step up, and later removal from the January 2023 on-call rota and reduction in risk assessment work were explained by other matters, including a misunderstanding about whether she wanted to leave, the availability of other staff, and her difficulty using the respondent's electronic templates.

The race discrimination claim succeeded only in relation to the 14 December 2022 support supervision meeting. The tribunal accepted that Ms Masiak and Ms Natzel spoke Polish during that meeting while the claimant, who was the only non-Polish speaker present, was being criticised, and held that this was less favourable treatment because of race within the meaning of section 13 EqA. The wider allegations that management generally used Polish to exclude her, that the car dispute was race-related, that her dismissal was race discrimination, and that the SSSC referral was race-related were all dismissed. On the same facts, the tribunal also upheld the harassment claim only for that meeting, holding that routine office use of Polish was too infrequent and innocuous to amount to harassment, but that the meeting itself did meet the section 26 EqA threshold.

The tribunal rejected victimisation and whistleblowing causation. It accepted that the claimant's statement in the 17 January 2023 meeting that colleagues' behaviour was racist was a protected act, but found that the dismissal had already become likely because of performance and conduct issues and was not because of that complaint. It also accepted that most of the alleged disclosures were protected disclosures, but found no link between those disclosures and the 14 December meeting, the January 2023 rota and risk-assessment decisions, or the dismissal under section 103A ERA. The tribunal also found that the respondent had generally responded to the concerns the claimant raised.

On remedies, the tribunal ordered payment of £16.97 for the unlawful deductions from wages. It awarded a single £2,500 sum for injury to feelings for the successful race discrimination and harassment findings together, with interest at 8% per annum from 14 December 2022 until the judgment date to be calculated separately if the parties could not agree it. The holiday pay claim was dismissed because the tribunal found no outstanding accrued leave at termination.