An age discrimination claim was struck out because there was a lack of evidence to demonstrate any reasonable prospect of success.
Facts
Mr Sinclair worked as a senior consultant for Faithful and Gould Ltd.
He was not offered to be trained on a new type of work known as BREEAM. He was determined by Faithful and Gould Ltd to be underutilised and was subsequently dismissed by reason of redundancy.
He claimed that because he was not offered training on the new type of work he was treated less favourably because of his age. He submitted a claim of direct age discrimination to the Tribunal.
Decision
The Tribunal struck out the claim at the Preliminary Hearing after concluding it had no reasonable prospect of success.
Although claims of discrimination are not to be struck out “except in the most obvious and plainest cases” the Tribunal decided that in this instance it was appropriate to strike out the application.
The facts were accepted by Mr Sinclair, but none of them substantiated age discrimination. The evidence to support the validity of his redundancy was extensive. It included:
All of his managers showed an earnest attempt to find him work but were unable to do so.
All of his managers identified that his under-utilisation was due to a lack of skills and preferences on the part of Mr Sinclair.
At no point, during his time with the company, did Mr Sinclair assert he was being deprived of work due to his age.
The BREEAM work was only offered to staff of a lower grade than the Mr Sinclair.
The comparators named by Mr Sinclair were lower-grade staff of a much more junior level. The circumstances of the comparators were materially different to those of Mr Sinclair and so they could not be considered genuine comparators.
The Tribunal concluded that there was no reasonable prospect of Mr Sinclair successfully establishing facts from which it could be concluded that he had been discriminated against because of his age.
The judgment is available here.
Mr R G Sinclair v Faithful + Gould Ltd: 2205164/2018