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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> London Fire Civil Defence Authority v Owusu [1997] UKEAT 703_97_0810 (8 October 1997) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1997/703_97_0810.html Cite as: [1997] UKEAT 703_97_810, [1997] UKEAT 703_97_0810

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APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR P STEWART (of Counsel) Room 611 Main Building Fire Brigade Headquarters Albert Embankment London SE1 7SD


 


JUDGE H J BYRT QC: This is an ex-parte hearing in relation to an appeal against the decision of the Industrial Tribunal sitting at London (North) which was promulgated in April 1997 when it held that the employers had unlawfully discriminated against the Applicant on racial grounds. The employers appeal from that decision.

The facts as found by the Tribunal can be shortly stated, this being a Preliminary Hearing.

The Respondent, the employee in this case, is a Ghanian by birth. He is an educated man. He has got a BSc Honours in Combined Studies and a Diploma in Industrial Relations and since 1981 has been employed by the Appellants at the lowest of clerical grades, namely an MG 12. Over the course of time, he has made repeated applications for promotion. There have also been opportunities to act up. In all those applications his cause has been unsuccessful, in contrast, he says, with a number of instances where white people with less experience than himself and less service have, in fact, been upgraded or had the opportunity of acting up.

It is on the basis of a whole series of instances which combine as a cogent body of evidence, that he contends there is a pattern of behaviour here which indicates that the Appellants, the employers, have a policy which discriminates against him. Unhappily, that is not the way that it has come out before the Industrial Tribunal.

This matter has already been before the Employment Appeal Tribunal on an earlier occasion because an earlier Industrial Tribunal had come to the conclusion that these separate instances upon which Mr Owusu relies were not acts which came within the time limits prescribed by the Act so as to enable the court to have jurisdiction to deal with them. The Employment Appeal Tribunal returned the matter for a re-hearing on the basis that if these individual acts could be demonstrated to be reflective of a policy, a pattern of behaviour which demonstrated a policy, it did not matter that the individual acts fell outside the three month time limit. It was for the purposes of reconsidering whether that could be said that the matter was remitted to a freshly constituted Tribunal.

It is arguable (and this is all we have to decide at this particular stage) that whilst the Industrial Tribunal picked up a whole range of instances where they felt there had been racial discrimination, largely outside the time limits of three months that we have to consider, they failed to state that this was symptomatic of a pattern or policy of discrimination against Mr Owusu. Mr Stewart, who has argued this case on behalf of the employers, has picked this point as one of law. With a heavy heart, having regard to the length of time this case has already occupied the Tribunals, we feel that this matter must go forward to a full hearing on this particular issue of law.

There is a subsidiary point which may have significance also, and needs further consideration. There seemed to have been a body of evidence before the Industrial Tribunal to the effect that Mr Owusu was offered the opportunity of acting up jointly, together with another member of the clerical grades, a Mr Amo. The Industrial Tribunal deal with the matter on the basis that it was a proposition put to Mr Owusu by Mrs Wingrove-Owens.

Equally however, there is a witness statement of a Mrs De Silva, which shows that on another occasion, it would seem, she presented Mr Owusu with the options of either acting up on his own for a period of time or doing so jointly together with Mr Amo. That is evidence which the Industrial Tribunal do not comment upon at all in their Decision. As I say, it may have significance and it does feature in the employers' points of appeal. We think it only right to allow the appeal go forward to a full Tribunal for that matter as well to be resolved if it can be.

In the circumstances, we think on all counts this matter should go forward to a full hearing.