Employment tribunal dismisses woman’s case against CPS
A woman who worked for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has lost her appeal against an Employment Tribunal (ET) ruling.
Mrs N Hepburn had worked for the CPS since 2005 as a crown prosecutor, then a senior crown prosecutor. In 2017 she was absent with migraines and during that time a complaint about her work was received, which her manager was instructed to make a performance issue.
There followed a series of letters between the claimant and her manager setting out allegations of victimisation. Following her return to work the claimant raised a grievance that was not upheld.
She took the case to a tribunal which made ‘trenchant’ findings against the claimant and dismissed her claims.
Her appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) concerned whether the original tribunal had properly considered the detriments relied on by the claimant and in particular whether the tribunal had given sufficient reasons for its findings that there was no victimisation.
A detriment is when you’re treated unfairly by your employer because you’ve done something protected by law.
John Bowers QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, criticised the judgment for not dealing logically with the 11 detriments claimed but concluded they were entitled to take some of the detriments together as they overlapped.
He added that looking at the decision as a whole and not taking passages in isolation, the reasons although unsatisfactory “do pass muster” so the appeal was refused.
The appeal raised the issues of whether the tribunal decision had properly considered the detriments relied on by the claimant before the tribunal and in particular whether the tribunal had given sufficient reasons for its findings that there was no victimisation.
The EAT thought that although poorly structured, the tribunal had considered all the detriments put forward and decided that in each case no detriment was made out because the claimant had an unjustified sense of grievance.
A second point was that the tribunal had considered the question of detriment purely from the point of view of the employer, but this was not borne out.
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