Facts

Mr Adewale was employed by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham as a debt recovery officer. In 2016, a redundancy situation arose due to council budget cuts. Mr Adewale was put into a formal redundancy and redeployment process, but did not take part and refused to engage with it. He was eventually dismissed due to his ongoing failure to attend work. This followed a hearing in which he did not take part, despite being warned that a decision would be made in his absence if he failed to attend.

Mr Adewale brought a claim alleging race, sex and age-related harassment, direct discrimination on grounds of race, sex and age, and victimisation. He made allegations about multiple issues, ranging from the council’s handling of the redundancy process through to the treatment of his absence and grievance.

Decision

The Employment Tribunal (“ET”) rejected all of the claims. It found that there was a genuine restructure in which Mr Adewale was likely to have secured redeployment if he had engaged with the process, but he was genuinely dismissed for his non-attendance. He was not treated in any way unfavourably because of earlier protected acts.  

In relation to his grievance, Mr Adewale relied on comparators to argue that his treatment was unjustified, but he used individuals who were in the same age group as him which, as the ET noted, “somewhat undermined” his age discrimination case. In relation to his dismissal for non-attendance, Mr Adewale also relied on a comparator, but the ET concluded that the latter had less extensive absence and (unlike him) had positively engaged in the process. In any event, the comparator was also subjected to the absence and disciplinary procedure when it was warranted.

The ET did not consider that any of the allegations were well founded. In respect of the vast majority of the claims, the ET found that Mr Adewale had failed to established facts from which discrimination could be inferred, so the burden of showing that there was no discrimination had not even transferred to the council.  

The judgment is available here

Mr Adekunle Adewale v London Borough of Barking and Dagenham 3202219/2016