The Claimant was a black African female born in Sierra Leone. She was employed by the Respondent employer from 16 February 2009 as a customer car park attendant working in a car park at St George's Residential Development.  The employer was a company which carried on business providing car parking facilities.

The marketing staff for St George's worked at the premises and were issued with tickets as they entered the car park.  To leave the tickets had to be validated and on occasion the validation machine was broken.  The Claimant had standing orders not to allow anyone to leave if their ticket was not validated.  On the 14th March 2009, the Claimant exercised this standing order and refused to allow a member of the marketing staff to leave.  The following day another member of the marketing staff came into the Claimant's office and was alleged to have said that "The fucking bloody machines are not working and who is paying your fucking bloody wages?", pointed to the sign on the wall and answered the question by saying, "St George's, you fucking stupid black African bitch". She went on insulting the Claimant, eventually letting herself out and slamming the door.

Over four decades the Coleherne Public House in Earls Court, London developed a national and international reputation as London's first 'gay pub'. Realpubs bought the premises.   Realpubs own and operate gastropubs and their business model is to buy failing pubs and reposition them as gastropubs, offering good food and drink to all sections of the community.

In September 2008 when Realpubs acquired the Coleherne it was then in decline. The premises underwent refurbishment and were re-launched as the Pembroke Arms, opening to the public on 5 December 2008.

The Claimant in this case was an openly gay man. His working life has been spent in the hospitality industry. Between 2003 and late 2008 he worked as General Manager of a gastropub in Ealing. In late November 2008 he was interviewed by Realpubs' Operational Manager for a post in the Pembroke Arms.  Following that interview the Claimant was offered and accepted a position as Assistant Manager at the Pembroke Arms. His employment commenced on 1 December 2008; it ended with his resignation on 11 January 2009.

As this is such a high profile case I don't intend to revisit the facts in any detail.  We all know by now that Ms O'Reilly, 53, was one of four female presenters over the age of 40 axed from Countryfile in 2008 who took the BBC to a Tribunal, claiming both sex and age discrimination, as well as victimisation.  She won on the ground of age discrimination.

What I want to focus on is a section taken from the tribunal transcript and quoted below.

"The central question in this case is why the decision was taken that the claimant would no longer be a presenter of Countryfile. That necessarily involved us considering by whom the decision was taken, when the decision was taken and on what basis.

"One might have expected that the when and by whom questions would be easy to answer. That was not the case.

"There is no documentation whatsoever of this decision-making process.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has handed down its decision in a ruling on whether employers can objectively justify age discrimination in a redundancy situation. 

Mr Woodcock was Chief Executive of North Cumbria Primary Care Trust and was made redundant following the merger of a number of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in the area.  Mr Woodcock had applied for one of the new chief executive roles after the PCT merger but was unsuccessful and no alternative employment for him was found.  He claimed that his dismissal amounted to direct age discrimination as notice to terminate his employment was given so as to expire one month before his 50th birthday, when he would have benefited from an enhanced pension.  

The Respondent was a printing business and the Claimant had worked for them for 23 years as an estimator.  And yes the case name is overflowing with irony!

There was no dispute that a redundancy situation existed and a letter went out to employees informing them that there would have to be compulsory redundancies and that the staff selected for potential redundancy would be chosen via a point scoring matrix system.  Through discussions with the union it was agreed that the scoring matrix headings were attendance, quality, productivity, abilities, skills, experience, disciplinary record and flexibility. The Claimant was not a member of the union.

The scoring was carried and the Claimant was informed that it was likely that out of a pool of three he would be selected for redundancy and he was invited to discuss the situation at a meeting. The scoring matrix that the Claimant received indicated the potential range of marking together with the standards and qualities that each level represented.