Parmar v Leicester City Council

6 Jun

Parmar v Leicester City Council [2024] EAT 85

Facts

The claimant in Parmar v. Leicester City Council was temporarily relieved of her position. An inquiry for disciplinary actions was also conducted on her. Her accusations were not very specific. The employer concluded there was nothing to respond to. The Indian-originated claimant filed a racial discrimination claim against her employer. Conflicts were normal at her workplace, she said, but the investigations had mainly focused on her since she was an Asian employee.

Discrimination claims follow a two-step procedure.

The tribunal's first task is to determine whether the claimant has presented any evidence of discrimination.
Second, the onus moves on the Respondent to refute discrimination if a Claimant has brought forward such evidence.

The burden of proof had changed when the panel determined that discrimination might account for the facts brought out by the claimant. Because the Respondent was unable to meet the burden of evidence, the Claimant's claim was successful.

In their appeal, the Respondent contended that the tribunal had erred in concluding that the burden of evidence had changed. It contended that the two-stage test ought to have been used by the panel to every accusation. It said that the tribunal ought not to have adopted a broad stance. Additionally, it was argued that the tribunal had erred by finding that the fact of a difference in treatment between the Claimant and others was sufficient to shift the burden of proof.

Held

The Employment Appeal Tribunal was of the opposite opinion. The investigation came to the conclusion that a general approach to the evaluation of the shifting of the burden of evidence was appropriate in this particular instance. It decided that the employment tribunal had rightly determined that a difference in treatment of other colleagues in comparable circumstances, if those colleagues were of a different race, was evidence that may establish a claim of racial discrimination. This was the conclusion reached by the court. Each and every piece of evidence had been thoroughly examined by the tribunal.