A Petroi v The Soho Sandwich Company Ltd

£60,000 for flawed investigation into age discrimination grievance

The claimant brought complaints following workplace incidents in which she was referred to as being “like my grandmother” and mocked using the Bengali word dadi, meaning grandmother.

The Employment Tribunal accepted that these were comments related to age which had the effect of humiliating her. The claimant raised concerns about bullying, harassment and age discrimination, but alleged that the employer failed to properly investigate her complaints or take meaningful action. Her subsequent resignation was linked directly to the way those complaints had been handled internally.

The Tribunal was critical not only of the conduct complained of, but also of the employer’s investigative response to it.

No investigation had been started after around a month. Although some enquiries were then undertaken in relation to the incident, the Tribunal found that the investigation was insufficient and that there had been a complete failure to investigate a second related complaint.

Requests by both the claimant and the alleged perpetrator to review CCTV footage were declined, and two witnesses whom the claimant asked the employer to interview were not spoken to at all.

The lack of contemporaneous documentation also proved damaging to the respondent’s case. There was no reliable documentary trail setting out what investigative steps, conclusions or remedial measures had been taken.

Cases of this kind demonstrate how important it is to avoid delay in concluding investigations and to ensure that interview notes are taken carefully, ideally in the form of verbatim transcripts wherever practicable.

A Petroi v The Soho Sandwich Company Ltd

Judgment: https://lnkd.in/ehPY_yim