L Chase v Northern Housing Consortium Ltd & Anor

There was an unreasonable delay in promulgation by the Tribunal of its written reasons. The Tribunal erred in failing to make findings necessary to determine the issues in the case or give adequate reasons for findings it did make. The reasons contained other significant errors of fact. Taken as whole this was an error of law alternatively it deprived the Claimant of a fair trial of her claim within a reasonable time.

The Tribunal failed to consider the Claimant’s pleaded case, or the circumstances of how certain allegations were not included in the list of issues when faced with the dispute about whether she was entitled to pursue some allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments for disability. As a result, it fell into factual error about whether the allegations had been pleaded and failed to consider whether the interests of justice would require them to be addressed notwithstanding their omission from the case managed list of issues.

The Tribunal was entitled to reach the findings of fact in relation to whether the Claimant had a disability within the meaning of the Equality Act, when that disability started and at what point the Respondents ought reasonably to have been aware of it.

The Tribunal did deal adequately with the Claimant’s pleaded case in respect of direct disability discrimination and reached findings of fact which were open to it on the evidence.

The Tribunal misdirected itself in law in relation to section 43C (2) Employment Rights Act 1996 and in finding that it did not apply to the Claimant’s protected disclosures to the auditor because the auditor was external to the First Respondent’s organisation.

This appeal is against the judgment of the employment tribunal sitting at Newcastle (EJ Pitt, Mr Adams and Mrs Maughan) which was sent to the parties on 3 November 2023. At the hearing of the appeal on 12 June 2025 I indicated that I would allow the appeal and remit the case for hearing by a freshly constituted Tribunal and that such remission would be on the basis that the re-hearing Tribunal need not have any regard to any of the findings of fact or law made in that judgment. I also indicated that I would provide written reasons for my decision to follow. These are those reasons.

The First Respondent is a non-political, not for distributed profit membership organisation. Its membership is mainly drawn local authority and social housing providers or arm’s length management organisations. It has over 450 members, the majority of which are from the social housing sector. The Respondent is a central purchasing body, or collaborative purchasing hub and operates under a ‘Consortium Procurement’ brand, with other 120 supply partners. Members purchase annual subscriptions which permit them to make use of the First Respondent’s services to achieve economies of scale, reduced administrative costs and increased competitiveness of pricing. It has a board of directors who are senior housing sector representatives, including from member organisations including local authorities.

The Second Respondent is the Chief Executive Officer of the First Respondent and was the Claimant’s direct line manager between 2015 and 2019. Her role included oversight of business development and procurement activity for the First Respondent.

The Claimant was employed by the First Respondent from 14 November 2011 until her resignation on notice with an effective date of termination of 25 June 2021. She had enjoyed successive promotions within the First Respondent and was Procurement Director; her duties included management of the Procurement and Contracts Team, completion of tenders, delivery of consultancy projects, management of procurement ‘roundtables’ and contract mediation on existing supply agreements. Following the promotion of the Second Respondent to CEO, the Claimant’s line manager was Mrs Catherine Wilmot, the Executive Director of Operations and Finance. Mr Joseph Gardiner was the Commercial Director and was the Claimant’s counterpart in the ‘Consortium Procurement’ function and in charge of the Business Development Team.

The Claimant’s pleaded case is that she had held concerns about the First Respondent’s internal procedures and adherence to procurement and contract terms since 2015. She had made disclosures in 2016, 2017 as well as March 2018. Little or nothing had been done in response to her raising concerns.

In her case, the events relevant to the claims began in February 2020, when the Claimant made the first of a series of disclosures to the First Respondent in line with its whistleblowing policy. The disclosures concerned the actions of the Finance team, which had been raising commission payment requests to supply partners whose supply agreements had expired and therefore where there was no contractual entitlement on the part of the First Respondent to payment. The Claimant raised concern that this conduct might constitute fraud and further that there were likely to be further instances of the First Respondent demanding payment to which it had no lawful entitlement. As these disclosures concerned unnecessary payments by publicly funded organisations, the public interest was readily apparent.

The Claimant pleads that she was dissatisfied with the First Respondent’s response to her disclosures. She felt that the First Respondent failed adequately to comprehend the seriousness of the situation, which in her opinion included ramifications for the First Respondent’s compliance with EU Procurement law, including the Public Contracts Regulations. She was also concerned that the First Respondent’s actions resulted in the misspend of taxpayer monies, because the failure to re-tender at the end of contracts effectively denied other suppliers the opportunity to tender and would potentially result in reduction in competition. This was particularly significant, in her opinion, given that the ultimate purchasers of such services were social and local authority housing tenants, who are often economically vulnerable. She was concerned that the decision by the First Respondent to fail re-tender contracts in accordance with the law, could be seen as bribery by the First Respondent in favour of those suppliers who benefitted from retaining publicly funded contracts without the need to re-tender.

The Claimant’s pleading sets out in detail how and when she made other disclosures to the First Respondent, for example, which revealed instances of the Finance and Business Development Teams seeking to enter supply agreements other than in accordance with the NHS terms or without conducting legally required procurement exercises, or undermining open competition by including competitor Consortiums in the procurement round-tables designed as a forum for sharing potentially market sensitive information between members. She particularises the extent of non-compliance with the procurement rules, indicating that the practice of failing to re-tender contracts to open market by the First Respondent was widespread and had been continuing for many years. Cumulatively, the Claimant’s pleaded case paints a picture of a culture at the First Respondent which operated in complete disregard for the legal obligations designed to protect the public purse and ensure proper and open competition in the interests of the taxpayer.

Her pleaded case was that she came under hostile opposition from the Business Development and Finance teams because the contentious payments comprised a significant proportion of the First Respondent’s income. She alleges that as a result the Second Respondent would repeatedly ignore her concerns and overrule them in favour of the immediate commercial interests of the First Respondent and its senior management, including the Second Respondent herself.

She alleges that because of concern about the effects of her disclosures, the First and Second Respondent decided to downplay or cover-up the problem. She sets out how the First and Second Respondents took various steps to seek to avoid the procurement rules, such as making preferential changes to the Framework Agreements in favour of a very important supplier, removing reference to the payment of significant sums of commission by that supplier from the report to be submitted to the First Respondent’s Risk and Audit Committee and withholding material evidence about the relevant dealings with that important supplier from the external auditor, Mr Almond of RSM, who was appointed in late 2020 to investigate the First Respondent’s compliance with procurement and contract rules.

The Claimant also alleges that the First and Second Respondent conducted a campaign of bullying and harassment designed to silence her. In a schedule (which she was directed by the Tribunal to produce), she sets out in chronological order and tabulated form, a series of incidents commencing on 19 February 2020 which she says were carried out with the intention or effect of creating an intimidating and hostile environment which was at least in part on grounds of retaliation for the difficulties which the Claimant’s disclosures had caused. It is not necessary to set them all out in detail for the purposes of this judgment, save to note that each of these incidents, or ‘detriments’ as they have been referred to by the parties and the Tribunal in its reasons are clearly numbered and particularised. They are extensively cross-referred to specific disclosures, which were also set out in a detailed chronological fashion by the Claimant in her ET1.

In June 2020, the Claimant commenced a period of sickness absence due to anxiety because of the events which were taking place at work. The Claimant’s case as pleaded is that from this point onwards, the First and Second Respondents were determined to see the Claimant leave her employment and that their actions were a continuation of the course of conduct of retaliation set out above, but also as a means of getting rid of the problems that the disclosures were obviously causing to the manner in which she alleges the First Respondent had been conducting its business.

In October 2020, the Claimant was referred to an occupational health practitioner, Dr Clugston, by the First Respondent. Dr Clugston reported that the Claimant’s anxiety was being perpetuated or aggravated by contact with the First Respondent’s employees and recommended a period of break in communications for the benefit of the Claimant’s health. The Claimant requested that communications from the Respondents should be with her husband in the first instance.

Matters came to a head in January 2021. According to the Claimant’s submissions on this appeal, the report of the external auditor, Mr Almond, had been published and the First Respondent considered that it was supportive of its position in that it concluded that no criminal activity had been revealed. The Claimant did not accept that the report was conclusive, given her previously expressed concerns that the First and Second Respondents had withheld material evidence and information from the investigator.

Shortly after publication of the Almond report, the First Respondent wrote (in an envelope addressed to the Claimant’s husband, but with contents directly addressed to the Claimant), inviting her to attend an in-person meeting. The Claimant wished her husband to attend in her place, or to be permitted to record the meeting, both of which she considered reasonable adjustments in view of her anxiety illness.

Two days later, the Second Respondent called the police and made a report to them about the conduct of the Claimant’s husband towards the Claimant, the terms of which do not appear to have been directly in evidence, but which caused the police to be sufficiently concerned about the Claimant’s welfare that they made an unannounced visit to her home. No evidence appears to have been led before the Tribunal about what evidential basis the Second Respondent had to justify such serious suspicions. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the relationship between the Claimant and the Respondents deteriorated yet further after this incident.

On 24 March 2021, the Claimant handed in her notice. The incidents of harassment and intimidation, according to her pleaded schedule, continued throughout the notice period. Included within those incidents was complaint about solicitor correspondence sent on behalf of the First Respondent to the Claimant concerning a post on LinkedIn which she had made which the First Respondent considered defamatory. The Claimant also complained that the Second Respondent had herself posted on LinkedIn in terms which the Claimant considered defamatory.

The following is taken from the chronology which the Claimant provided to the EAT, with which Mr Bronze, who appeared on behalf of the Respondents before me and before the Tribunal, took no exception.

On 29 November 2021, the Claimant submitted the ET1 which I have summarised above. Her claims included direct and associative discrimination on grounds of disability (s 13 Equality Act 2010, ‘EqA’), failures to make reasonable adjustments (ss20-21 EqA), detriment on grounds of protected disclosures (s 47B Employment Rights Act 1996 ‘ERA’), automatically unfair constructive dismissal (s 103 ERA) and so-called ordinary unfair dismissal (s 98 ERA).

The Respondents filed an ET3 in January 2022 and a case management hearing took place before EJ Sweeney on 21 February 2022 at which a list of issues was discussed. That list of issues recorded that the Claimant ‘confirmed’ that the ‘only’ claim in respect of a failure to make a reasonable adjustment was in respect of the ability to record the meeting in person on 14 January 2021 and that she had been asked whether there was any other complaint of discrimination in her claim form which she wished to pursue but said there was not.

The written decision from the case management hearing was sent to the parties on 9 March 2021. On 18 March 2022, the Claimant wrote to both the Tribunal and the Respondents’ representatives, ‘in response to the case management order’ stating that it was wrong to indicate that the reasonable adjustment allegations were limited to those included in the list of issues and setting out her other pleaded claims of reasonable adjustments by reference to the numbered paragraphs of her ET1, stating that they should let her know if any further information was required.

On 18 April 2022, the Respondent filed amended grounds of resistance in which it did not address the specific allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments but denied the claims on the basis that the duty to make reasonable adjustments never arose, because it was unaware of the Claimant’s disability. It also disputed the Claimant’s disability status.

On 4 August 2022, the Respondents applied to postpone the hearing listed to start on 31 August 2022. That application was unsuccessful. Witness statements were subsequently exchanged on 12 August 2022. On 30 August 2022, EJ Pitt directed the Claimant to prepare - during the course of that day – an agreed list of the protected disclosures to include the date of each disclosure, the manner of the disclosure and the person to whom the disclosure was made and ‘the detriment which allegedly followed each PID’. As I have said, the Claimant complied with that order, which must have been an extremely substantial task for a litigant in person at such short notice.

The Tribunal heard the evidence in the trial of the Claimant’s claims on 31 August, 1 and 2, 5 and 6 September 2022. A hearing for submissions was listed for 24 and 25 November 2022, with a direction for submissions in writing by no later than 7 days before. The Claimant made written submissions comprising 64 pages within that deadline. The Respondents’ skeleton argument was submitted late on 22 November 2022. On the same day, the Tribunal wrote to the parties postponing the submissions hearing, due to judicial ill-health.

The submissions hearing took place on 13 February 2023. Deliberations then took place in chambers on 20, 21 and 22 February 2023 and again on 3 and 4 April 2023. The parties regularly sought updates from the Tribunal as to when the written reasons and judgment would be available over the summer and autumn of 2023. The written reasons, as I have said, were sent to the parties on 3 November 2023.

It is therefore sadly the case that the written reasons and judgment were only sent to the parties over 13 months after the Tribunal heard the evidence in the case and more than 8 months after receiving the oral submissions. Whilst ill-health played a role in causing some of the delay, this is an unacceptable period for parties to have to wait to receive the determination of a case before the employment tribunal and well beyond the expected period for promulgation of judgments which is 3 ½ months.

The Claimant’s appeal against the judgment was instituted on 14 December 2023 and came before John Bowers KC, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, on 29 February 2024. He permitted Grounds 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 10 and 11 to proceed, but not Grounds 5, 7, 8, 9 or 11-20. The Claimant did not apply to renew those Grounds of appeal pursuant to Rule 3(10) of the Employment Appeal Tribunal Rules ‘EAT Rules’, she tells me in the interests of managing her mental health.

In the course of the hearing before me, the Claimant made submissions which touched upon some of the Grounds which had not been permitted to proceed to the full hearing, notably her complaints that the Tribunal erred in law in relation to its approach to the questions of ‘causation’ of the acts of detriment and the state of mind of those who made decisions which related to her employment at the First Respondent, which would have been Grounds 13, 14 and 15. Mr Bronze quite rightly drew to my attention the limits of the appeal permitted, and I indicated to the Claimant that she would need to apply under rule 3(10) if she wished to proceed with those Grounds. In the event, I have allowed the appeal on other grounds and the Claimant therefore did not need to make any such application, although she indicated to me that she would have made an application to renew if necessary and the grounds were not abandoned.

It is necessary for me to preface my discussion of the grounds of appeal with some general observations regarding the quality of the written reasons. In my judgment, these fall well below the standard which should be expected in terms of basic literacy and factual accuracy. They are riddled with typographical and spelling errors to an extent which can only mean that no proofreading has taken place. Words are omitted or repeated. Similarly, there are ‘copy/paste’ or computer editing errors throughout the document resulting in oddities such as capitalised words in the middle of sentences.

Most judges are no doubt guilty of sending out written reasons which contain the odd typographical error, and it is not in general reasonable to expect written documents to demonstrate model grammar or complete freedom from minor mistakes. Such errors in many cases will not affect the meaning of the reasons on a fair reading of them as a whole and will only in rare case even arguably constitute an error of law. However, the lack of care taken over the production of the reasons in this case is so fundamental that in my judgment it affects the ability of this Appeal Tribunal to rely on the accuracy of its contents. Some of the judgment is unreadable nonsense. For example, the final sentence of paragraph 141 reads,

“This is the same contract referred to by Mr Walton the previous day that this is the same to simply Mr Walton had Chris raised the previous day.”

Not only does this not make sense as a matter of basic English, but there was also no person known as ‘Chris’ involved in the case or mentioned in the evidence. Doing the best I can, I cannot read this sentence and understand what is meant by it in the context of the issues the Tribunal had to decide, even from the perspective of having the benefit of hearing the parties’ submissions and extensive reading of materials in the case. I accept the submission of the Claimant that production of the written reasons has been first delayed to a point of embarrassment for the Tribunal and then rushed to get the document out. I therefore conclude that mistakes of this nature and seriousness are related to the lengthy delay in promulgation of the reasons.

Further, the way the Tribunal expressed itself has caused confusion as to the content of material findings. At paragraph 139, the Tribunal found,

“On 9^th March 2020, there is a note of the meeting made by the claimant with Ms Harrison who was not shown it at the time to confirm its accuracy. The complaint here is that Ms Harrison made unfounded/unjustified accusations that the claimant was stressed and that her communications with Mr Gardiner were aggressive. the (sic) Tribunal concluded that this was an observation from a manager to a member of their team to show empathy towards the team member. The Tribunal cannot see how this would amount to a detriment.”

Mr Bronze first submitted that on behalf of the Respondents that ‘the team member’ towards whom the Tribunal found Ms Harrison to have been ‘showing empathy’ was the Claimant. However, that conclusion is hard to reconcile with the apparent findings that Ms Harrison had told the Claimant that she was ‘stressed’ and ‘that her communications were aggressive’. Mr Bronze conceded that, ‘it was not the easiest judgment in the world to follow’ and revised his submission to suggest that in fact it was Mr Gardiner to whom Ms Harrison was showing empathy. I personally struggle to read the paragraph in that second way considering the use of the direct article in respect of ‘team member’ which to me suggests it is the same person as mentioned earlier in the same sentence as ‘member of their team’. Whatever the right reading may be, this is but one example of when the Tribunal’s reasoning was so compressed and poorly written as to be impossible to understand.

The Claimant raised a further concern with this paragraph, which is that this concise manner of dealing with the episode fundamentally failed to engage with the essence of her case, which was that Ms Harrison ought not to have made the comment at all, and that by taking Mr Gardiner’s side she was subjecting the Claimant to a detriment, because the Claimant was not ‘stressed’ and her correspondence was not ‘aggressive’ and nor was it reasonable of Mr Gardiner to perceive it as such, but that the comments were clearly about the Claimant’s protected disclosures concerning Mr Gardiner’s alleged conduct and therefore would not have been made to someone who had not made such disclosures.

Mr Bronze was driven, as he was on several occasions, to submit that all those relevant findings needed to be ‘inferred’. Whilst I am mindful of the need not to submit written reasons to overly anxious scrutiny but to read them fairly and as a whole in their proper context, I cannot accept Mr Bronze’s submission: if the Tribunal was accepting that Ms Harrison was entitled to make those comments it ought to have set out its reasons, however briefly. It is also hard to see how the Tribunal justified its apparent conclusion that there was not even a potential detriment to the Claimant in Mrs Harrison making direct criticism of her style of communication or objectively negative observations about her mental health.

It therefore follows that in my judgment, following the long delay in its production, the Tribunal’s judgment ultimately has been rushed and consequently in several places omits to grapple with the substance of the issues which were before the Tribunal.

Similar concerns arise out of the lack of structure in the reasons. It is hard to discern when the Tribunal is reciting evidence received as opposed to making findings of fact. Additionally, the Tribunal may have found it easier if they had chosen a single structure for the judgment and stuck to it. At times they appear to navigate through the evidence by reference to chronological order of events, at others they seek to separate out certain issues (such as ‘medical evidence’) from the main chronology. Nor is there a clear pathway regarding the issues under consideration. There is only occasional signposting within the judgment as to which ‘detriment’ is being addressed, and for the most part, it is only partially possible to identify which issues are being addressed by cross-referencing back to the Claimant’s schedule or ET1 and, even then, there are gaps. At times, the Tribunal appears to refer to a particular protected disclosure, but at no point does it ever make findings about what the disclosures were.

Moreover, I conclude that in several respects, the Tribunal appears to have forgotten the evidence led before it on material issues, which has compromised its ability to adjudicate fairly on the matters before it. I find that the judgment has put together retrospectively from deliberation notes, and the passage of time has made it impossible to for the Tribunal to recall enough information to identify or fill any gaps and material omissions have been made.

It is against a background of these general observations that I turn to the specific issues raised by the grounds of appeal.

I have addressed these grounds together because they overlap substantially. Ground 1 (delay) and Ground 2 (failure to make necessary findings of fact/give reasons) both arose out of the Claimant’s complaint that the Tribunal had, partly due to unreasonable delay and subsequent rushed and inadequate judgment, failed in law in meeting its basic task of resolving the issues before it. Ground 11 covered much of the same ground, albeit with a focus on the question of ‘causation’ of the alleged detriments and an alleged failure to consider whether they were due to the admitted protected disclosures.

The relevant legal principles regarding appeals on grounds of unreasonable delay in the EAT were not in dispute. The leading case in respect of unreasonable delay in promulgation of a judgment is Connex v Bangs [2005] EWCA Civ 14. In that case Mummery LJ said (§§3-4)

“3.

The likely effects of delayed decision-making, which can be serious, are relevant in determining what is a reasonable time [for promulgation of a judgment]. A tribunal’s delay prolongs legal uncertainty and postpones finality. It increases anxiety in an already stressful situation. It may cause injustice. A claimant in the right is wrongly kept out of his remedy and a defendant in the right has to wait longer than is reasonable for the allegations and claims against him to be rejected.

4.

It is self-evident that delay may also have a detrimental effect on the quality and soundness of the decision reached. This is more likely to occur where the decision turns less on the interpretation and application of the law than on the resolution of factual disputes, on which the tribunal has heard contradictory oral evidence from witnesses. Excessive delay may seriously diminish the unique advantage enjoyed by the tribunal in having seen and heard the witnesses give evidence and may impair its ability to make an informed and balance assessment of the witnesses and their evidence.”

Mummery LJ then set out the reasons why, in an appeal before the EAT, to which only a limited right of appeal arises in respect of an error of law, different principles apply to those in other civil cases when it comes to assessing the impact of delay of promulgation of a judgment. He held that it would be wrong to state the right of appeal on grounds of delay too broadly and continued (§43),

“In my judgment, an appeal from an employment tribunal on the ground on unreasonable delay in promulgating its decision is governed by the following principles:

(1)

It is confined to questions of law. s 21(1) of the 1996 Act says so in the clearest terms. In general, there is no appeal on the independent ground that the tribunal made erroneous findings of fact. The employment tribunal is the final arbiter of facts found by it so long as there was no error of law. It is not the function of the employment appeal tribunal or of this court to interfere with findings of fact by weighing the evidence and assessing its importance with a view to “correcting” erroneous findings of fact by the tribunal or requiring them to be re-litigated before another employment tribunal.

(2)

No question of law arises from the decision itself just because it was not promulgated within a reasonable time. Unreasonable delay is a matter of fact, not a question of law. It does not in itself constitute an independent ground of appeal. Unreasonable delay may result in a breach of article 6 and possibly give rise to state liability to pay compensation to the victim of the delay, but it does not in itself give rise to a question of law, which would found an appeal challenging the correctness of the delayed decision and for obtaining an order reversing the delayed decision or for a re-trial. I agree with the appeal tribunal (paragraph 12) that in cases of delayed decisions

“… it cannot be just that there should be an automatic sanction of a re-hearing, because, quite apart from the adventitious loss to one or the other party of a result in his or her favour, that will only compound the problem, in leading to yet further delay and to the risk of yet further dimming of recollections.”

(3)

No question of law arises and no independent ground of appeal exists simply because, by virtue of material factual errors and omissions resulting from delay, the decision is “unsafe”. A challenge to the tribunal’s findings of fact is not, in the absence of perversity (see (4) below, a valid ground of appeal and there is no jurisdiction under s21(1) of the 1996 Act to entertain it.

(4)

In order to succeed in a challenge to the facts found by the tribunal it is necessary

to establish that the decision is, as a result of the unreasonable delay, a perverse one either in its overall conclusion or on specific matters of material fact and credibility. Perversity is a question of law within s21(1) of the 1996 Act. It is extremely difficult to establish in general (see Yeboah v. Crofton [2002] IRLR 634) and particularly where the challenge is to findings on credibility.

(5)

It is not incompatible with article 6 of the Convention for domestic legislation to limit the right of appeal from an employment tribunal to questions of law. It was not argued that there was any such incompatibility.

(6)

Even if it were incompatible with article 6 to li limit appeals to questions of law, it is not possible by use of s 3(1) of the 1998 Act or otherwise to interpret s21(1) of the 1996 Act as expanding a right of appeal expressly limited to questions of law to cover questions of fact. To interpret s21(1) as allowing appeals to be brought because the decision is factually “unsafe” and the findings of fact were “wrong” would be an exercise in amending the Employment Tribunals Act 1996. It would be outside the scope of legitimate judicial interpretation.

(7)

There may, however, be exceptional cases in which unreasonable delay by the tribunal in promulgating its decision can properly be treated as a serious procedural error or material irregularity giving rise to a question of law in the “proceedings before the tribunal.” That would fall within s 21(1), which is not confined to questions of law to be found in the substantive decision itself. Such a case could occur if the appellant established that the failure to promulgate the decision within a reasonable time gave rise to a real risk that, due to the delayed decision, the party complaining was deprived of the substance of his right to a fair trial under article 6(1). Article 6 (1) guarantees a right to a fair trial. A point on whether or not a person has had a fair trial in the employment tribunal is capable of giving rise to a question of law. s21(1) does not, in my view, expressly or impliedly exclude a right of appeal where, due to excessive delay, there is a real risk that the litigant has been denied or deprived of the benefit of a fair trial of the proceedings and where it would be unfair or unjust to allow the delayed decision to stand. That could give rise to a question of law “in the proceedings before the tribunal,” which are still pending while the decision of the tribunal is awaited. Although this interpretation of s21(1) is more restrictive of the right of appeal than in an ordinary civil case, it would not be incompatible with article 6(1).”

More generally, Mr Bronze reminded me of the decision in Slingsby v Griffith Smith Solicitors (UKEAT/0619/07/MAA) in which HHJ McMullen QC took the opportunity to summarise some of the relevant principles which fall to be applied by the EAT when considering whether an error of law has arisen in the context of a delayed judgment (§§34-40): -

“Delay, is a question of fact, and generally not appealable in a jurisdiction limited to questions of law (see Connex South Eastern Limited v Bangs [2005] ICR 763 CA per Mummery LJ).

35.

As a rule of thumb in Employment Tribunals and the EAT, a judgment should be promulgated within three and a half months; (see Kwamin v Abbey National Plc [2004] ICR 841).

36.

An analytic or clinical approach should be taken so that each period that is subject to criticism by way of delay is examined to determine whether there is culpable delay, or delay which threatens the fairness of the trial (see Porter v Magill [2002] 2 AC 357).

37.

A tribunal should give reasons so that the parties can understand why they won or lost (see the Employment Tribunal Rules 2004 and Meek v City of Birmingham City Council [1987] IRLR 250).

38.

An Employment Tribunal is to decide issues which are important to the resolution of the dispute before it (see Comfort v Lord Chancellors Department [2004] EWCA Civ 349 and High Table Limited v Horst [1997] IRLR 513). That does not mean it must decide every issue of fact or law placed before it, only those issues which are necessary for the inclusion on the dispute before it. Understandably, a tribunal faced with concessions made by representatives or acceptance of propositions made by key witnesses cannot be criticised if its judgment is shorter and does not descend into formal decision-making.

39.

When an allegation of perversity is made about a tribunal’s judgment, a high threshold must be surpassed, requiring an overwhelming case to be met (see Yeboah v Crofton [2002] IRLR 634).

40.

The EAT is not to conduct a detailed examination by use of the non-technical fine-toothcomb, or the scientific microscope, in order to promote such a case. An employment tribunal may make an error of law, yet the judgment may be upheld on appeal if it is unarguably correct (see Dobie v Burns International Security [1984] ICR 812).”

The Claimant in her skeleton argument referred to Meek v City of Birmingham District Council [1987] IRLR 250 in support of the proposition that it is an error of law for the Tribunal to fail to give sufficient reasons to enable a party to understand why it has lost on a particular issue.

Mr Bronze submitted to me that I should not consider the period of delay between the closing of the evidence in September and the receipt of submissions in November to be culpable because that was a reasonable period of postponement and further that the period of delay to February 2023 was occasioned by ill-health and therefore was outside the Tribunal’s control. I am prepared to accept those points insofar as they go, however, those periods of delay remain relevant when it comes to the weight to be attached to the later periods of delay. Given the history of previous delay, whatever the cause, it was imperative by February 2023 that conclusion of this case was prioritised.

In response to the chasing emails from the parties, on each occasion the Tribunal responded to state that the decision would be promulgated ‘shortly’ without any explanation for delay or offer of a firm deadline. There is no suggestion in the correspondence that there was any impediment between early April and November 2023 in finalising the written reasons. To take a further 6 months in circumstances where the parties have already had to wait for 8 months since the evidence and in a case where the Claimant’s disability occasioned by her anxiety related to the issues under consideration is wholly unreasonable.

As to whether the delay had contributed to any error of law, the Claimant made the overarching submission that the judgment did not make any findings about the content and nature of any of the protected disclosures, save for the two which were in dispute (the Respondents conceded all but 2 of the alleged disclosures were qualifying disclosure in their written submission in November 2022), namely PD13 and PD19.

In support of her submission that the judgment was flawed because of the delay in its promulgation, the Claimant took me to what she described as several omissions in the judgment in respect of evidence which the Panel received, but to which no reference was made in the reasons. In particular, she had been specifically requested to supply evidence of the content of the disclosures which she had made. She did so in her written submissions, but no consideration of the extent or nature of the disclosures is undertaken by the Tribunal.

Moreover, she pointed to several examples of live witness evidence which did not feature at all in the decision. For example, she refers to the cross-examination of Mr Robinson, to the effect that he was not impartial in respect of the disclosures due to his personal links, which is not mentioned in the judgment. She also referred to what she alleges were concessions or inconsistencies revealed in the cross-examination of the Second Respondent which are not mentioned by the Tribunal or the fact that the First Respondent’s HR Consultant accepted that the First Respondent had been seeking to pursue termination of the Claimant’s employment on grounds of relationship breakdown.

Whilst I am conscious that this was a case in which the contested oral evidence of the witnesses of fact was central to the Tribunal’s determination, if these complaints had been the full extent of the alleged omissions from the judgment, then I would not have been satisfied that there was an error of law or any failure to provide a fair hearing within a reasonable time. As set out in the quote from High Table v Horst above, a Tribunal does not need to make findings in respect of every single aspect of the evidence before it and nothing which the Claimant submitted to me persuaded me that these examples were critical to or liable to undermine the Tribunal’s reasoning. Indeed, it seems to me that in the context of a case which was wide-ranging in terms of the number of issues, types of legal cause of action and scope of factual disputes, it was sensible and almost inevitable for the Tribunal to focus on what it considered the main and decisive issues when reaching its findings of fact.

However, the complaint went further than that. The Claimant also submitted that the Tribunal directly addressed only 37 out of the 93 pleaded detriments. The sole finding in the reasons was a generic conclusion at §439 of the Judgment that the Tribunal, ‘did not accept the claimant’s account or interpretation on most of the occasions.’ This, even taken together with some other generalised criticisms of the Claimant contained in the reasons, were in my judgment insufficient to fulfil the Tribunal’s duty to provide reasons for its findings in circumstances where it had not taken the trouble anywhere specifically to identify let alone address the substance of the alleged detriments. The result was that many detriments were simply not addressed within the main body of the findings at all and, in some instances, the Tribunal appears to have forgotten the relevant evidence or misunderstood the nature of the allegation it had to determine.

Coming back to the evidence of Mr Robinson, Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, referred to above, the Claimant submitted that the omission to address the evidence and associated confusion in the findings about the chronology of these events has led to a situation where the Tribunal has failed to engage with her case that the admitted protected disclosure she made to Mr Robinson (PD 17 on 15 October 2020) was not considered. She had alleged that it was associated with the subsequent decision by the Second Respondent on 23 October 2020 to refuse her request for an extension of her contractual sick pay entitlement. I do not understand the Respondents to be contending that the refusal of that request was not a detriment. So, the question arose for the Tribunal whether that decision was materially influenced by the disclosures? I cannot see that the Tribunal ever considered this point and there is nothing in the reasons as to whether it dismissed the allegation and if so, why.

In my judgment, it was a material omission for the Tribunal to fail to address the Claimant’s allegation that the refusal to extend her occupational sick pay was linked to the fact that she had sought to make Mr Robinson directly aware of her concerns a few days previously. It was not sufficient for the Tribunal to find that the Second Respondent’s decision was ‘reasonable’ in light of the Claimant’s contractual entitlement (§302): that was to miss the point as to whether the exercise of the discretion available to the Second Respondent was influenced by her knowledge of the Claimant’s previous and particularly most recent disclosures including her challenge to the extent to which she was now alleging that there had been concealment of material evidence by the Second Respondent from the Audit and Risk Committee and now the external auditor, RSM.

By way of further example, in respect of detriment 93, the Tribunal characterised this detriment as solely relating to the solicitor’s letter which the First Respondent caused to be sent to the Claimant (§364). As a result of this narrow characterisation of that ‘detriment’ (§37 Judgment page 27 of my bundle), it wholly failed to address the pleaded allegation that, ‘Ms Harrison also made a defamatory comment about the claimant to the entire [First Respondent’s] organisation on the same day.’ This allegation was pleaded in both the ET1 at paragraph 166, and identified in the Claimant’s schedule of detriments, namely that the Second Respondent had written to the First Respondent’s employees and referred to the Claimant as ‘someone’ who was trying ‘to bring the organisation’s name into disrepute.’ It is totally unclear from the written reasons whether the Tribunal considered that the Second Respondent did make the comment attributed to her by the Claimant, or to whom she made it. Making such a public comment about the Claimant was potentially a detriment and the Tribunal needed also to engage with that question and whether it could be satisfied that what it had found to be the Second Respondent’s accepted sense of frustration with the Claimant’s repeated disclosures played no part in her decision to make the comment.

Mr Bronze conceded that this allegation had not been at all dealt with by the Tribunal. He sought to suggest that the error arose due to the fault of the Claimant in that she had focussed her attention on the solicitor’s letter and not the statement made by the Second Respondent. I cannot accept that submission in circumstances where the Claimant had consistently set out both allegations in her ET1 and the schedule of detriments which she had been ordered to provide on the first day of the hearing. Nor, as was submitted by Mr Bronze, can a general finding about the Claimant’s personality or general reactions to events bridge the gaps here.

It seems to me that the delays between the periods of deliberation and production of the reasons appear to have resulted in the Tribunal forgetting the evidence or the true scope of the issues and consequently failing to make findings in respect of key allegations. The fact that this allegation comes towards the end of what the Tribunal had elsewhere in its reasons complained of as an excessive list of complaints by the Claimant, in my judgment this is a further example of the consequences of the judgment being rushed out following that long delay. Whether the overall outcome is described as a failure to provide a fair trial within a reasonable period or a failure to provide adequate reasons it amounts in my judgment to an error of law.

In respect of Ground 11, I consider that it was a material omission for the Tribunal to fail to review in its reasoning the nature and severity of the disclosures made by the Claimant or to conduct any analysis of who within the First Respondent’s organisation would have been aware of or potentially affected by them and the Claimant’s apparent determination to keep making disclosures in the face of what she considered an inadequate response. The disclosures in this case were extensive, of the utmost seriousness and, on the Claimant’s case as I have set out above, had potentially existential consequences for the First Respondent. Such analysis was in my judgment essential, because it would have fed directly into the Tribunal’s assessment of whether the actions of the Respondents could be said to be materially uninfluenced or unaffected by the disclosures. This was, in my judgment, an error in that the Tribunal deprived itself of the basic facts which it needed to decide in order to consider the reason why the Respondents treated the Claimant in the way they did, but also a failure to provide sufficient reasons to allow the Claimant to understand how the Tribunal had reached the conclusion that this series of grave disclosures had nothing to do with the Respondents’ conduct.

The Claimant raised other examples in her skeleton argument and oral submissions of specific omissions from the findings in comparison with the pleaded case and list of issues. Given the conclusion I have already reached, supported by the examples I have already set out above, I do not propose to lengthen this judgment by setting them out in detail, as they would not affect my decision.

The Claimant’s complaint under this Ground was that issues which had been included in her pleaded ET1 and also in her list of detriments prepared at the start of the hearing were wrongly treated by the Tribunal as ‘new’ and un-pleaded issues so that it was an error of law for the Tribunal to treat the Claimant as needing to amended alternatively as making a late application to amend to include the issues.

The issues which were omitted from consideration by the Tribunal were 4 allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments for the Claimant’s disability which were said to have taken place in the period shortly before her resignation in 2021. The Respondents’ position on this appeal was to accept that the omitted allegations had all been clearly and adequately pleaded by the Claimant in her ET1, but to contend that nevertheless the Tribunal was entitled not to determine those issues because the Claimant had abandoned them in the course of the proceedings. At a case management hearing, a list of issues had been drawn up which included the observation that the Claimant had ‘confirmed’ that the ‘only’ allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments were limited to the 2 instances of alleged breach specified in the list of issues. Accordingly, it said, the Claimant had abandoned claims in respect of the further 4 instances of alleged breach. (I observe that this does not appear to have been approach taken on behalf of the Respondents before the Tribunal, which was to suggest that the allegations were ‘new’ because they were not in the list of issues.)

As I have set out above, in fact, the Claimant, upon being sent the case management order, within a few days wrote to both the Respondents’ representatives and the Tribunal setting out her belief that the record of the case management hearing was inaccurate and stating that the list of issues had omitted several allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments and, noting that she was a litigant in person and unfamiliar with the procedure, requesting clarification as to how the case management order could be rectified. It appears that neither the Respondents’ representatives nor the Tribunal responded substantively to this correspondence and the matter was simply left.

The ET3 nevertheless pleaded to all of the reasonable adjustment allegations on the same basis, namely that there had been no breach of duty either because (i) the Claimant did not have a qualifying disability at the time of the alleged breaches or (ii) the Respondents were not aware of her disability and it was not unreasonable for them not to be aware of it.

The status of lists of issues in relation to the pleaded cases and the duties of the Tribunal as a result were recently considered by the Court of Appeal in Moustache v Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2025] EWCA Civ 185; [2025] IRLR 470. Warby LJ, having reviewed the authorities, said at paragraph 40,

“A list of issues is not a pleading but a case management tool. The main purpose of such a document is to summarise the existing pleadings not to amend them. On the other hand, as Mensah shows, a party may conduct itself in such a way as to lose the right to have the ET decide a pleaded issue, thereby reducing the scope of the tribunal’s corresponding duty. An agreed list of issues is one way in which that could in principle be done. Such a list is, after all, an express agreement that the tribunal should conduct the proceedings in a particular way, and an invitation to the tribunal to do so. A tribunal will usually be entitled to confine its attention to the issues on the list. By way of exception, however, it may be necessary in the interests of justice to depart from even an agreed list. There are at least two distinct categories of situation in which that may be so. The first is where a pleaded claim has been omitted from the list in circumstances that do not amount to abandonment of the claim. The second is where the claim has not been pleaded but the fundamental duty of fairness makes it necessary (that is to say, essential) that it should be raised and considered.”

The issue on this appeal is whether the ET erred in failing to determine the claims of failure to make reasonable adjustments which were part of the pleaded case before it. The Tribunal appears to have fallen into factual error, because at paragraph 426 of its reasons, it wrongly found that the Claimant was raising allegations of failure to make reasonable adjustments, ‘for the first time’ in her list of detriments. However, as I have stated, it is common ground before me that in fact the issues which she raised there were all fully and properly pleaded in the grounds of complaint with the ET1. It follows from that, that the Tribunal cannot have considered the Claimant’s pleaded case either properly or at all when reaching that finding. I consider that to be concerning state of affairs, particularly where the Claimant was in person and the Respondents were represented by counsel. In completely overlooking the pleaded cases, the Tribunal has, to adopt the phrasing used by Mummery LJ in Parekh v Brent LBC [2012] EWCA Civ 1630 (paragraph 32), fallen into the error of ‘slavishly’ sticking to the list of issues and failing to have any regard to the pleaded case before it.

The Tribunal, having made that mistake, therefore did not address its mind at all to the circumstances in which the list of issues did not reflect the pleaded case and thereby deprived the Claimant of any opportunity to demonstrate that it was in the interests of justice for the Tribunal to consider those issues, nevertheless. It was an error of law for the Tribunal not to address its discretion whether to permit the allegations to proceed. Whilst it is not possible to say how that discretion would have been exercised, if the Tribunal had gone on to consider whether the omission of the reasonable adjustment allegations from the list of issues amounted to abandonment, it would have been bound to take account of the fact that the Claimant had written shortly after the case management order was promulgated to complain about the omission of those issues from the list and also the fact that the Respondents had been able to plead to the reasonable adjustments case in a manner which meant that no prejudice could conceivably arise by reason of their being additional instances on which reasonable adjustments ought to have been made when exercising its discretion, which it did not do.

In this Ground the Claimant complained that the Tribunal had made findings of fact in relation to both (i) when her mental health condition met the definition of disability for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 and (ii) what knowledge the Respondents had of such disability and when which were not open to it on the evidence.

She argued that the Tribunal relied heavily on later evidence to draw inferences about what the position would have been earlier in time, which she suggested was illogical. In particular, it had referred to her answers to an ill-health questionnaire dated 27 January 2021 in support for its conclusion that as at the welfare meeting on 14 January 2021 she did not meet the definition of disability. Again, she can point to the fact that the Tribunal did get itself into a muddle regarding the chronology at § 405 of its reasons, because it (mis)quotes from the 27 January questionnaire.

The Claimant is correct that §405 of the reasons is not very clearly expressed, but the Tribunal does correctly quote the document previously at §387 of its reasons and I accept that it had in mind the correct chronology when it reached its conclusions on the disability issues.

I also accept the submission of Mr Bronze that these findings of fact were properly open to the Tribunal on the evidence. When considering the progress of a deteriorating or fluctuating condition, such as anxiety and depression, a fact-finder is likely to need to ‘join the dots’ between evidence of medical opinion given on different dates and it would be entirely appropriate for a tribunal to use all the other evidence it has available regarding the condition, the claimant’s ability to function in day-to-day activity, and what would have reasonably been foreseeable about the duration or prognosis of that condition to draw inferences about precisely when a condition became long-term or sufficiently significant to meet the threshold for disability. That can and will on occasion involve reasoning backwards as well as forwards along a chronology. I cannot see any error of law in the approach which the Tribunal has taken with respect to its findings regarding when the Claimant’s condition could reasonably have been expected to endure 12 months or longer or the Respondents’ knowledge of the disability.

I would therefore dismiss the appeal on this ground.

The Claimant complained that the Tribunal had mischaracterised her complaint for Disability Discrimination. On 10 March 2021, the First Respondent wrote to the Claimant inviting her to attend a meeting in person to ‘discuss your situation’. At §§418 of its Judgment, the Tribunal states,

“In her ET1 The (sic) claimant’s criticism is it was a deliberate use of a loophole in the agreement to communicate with Mr Chase. The Tribunal understood this to mean that although the envelope was addressed to the claimant its content letter (sic) was addressed to her. In her witness statement, the claimant expands upon this and states this was a deliberate attempt to undermine the claimant’s support by having her husband deliver bad news and it was opportunistic.”

The Claimant points out that what she pleaded in her ET1 did refer to those matters, but that the real thrust of the complaint was about the request to attend a meeting as contained in the pleading:

“This was a completely unreasonable request given their knowledge of my condition at the time and was made more distressing by the first inclusion of an overt dismissal threat.”

She submits that she was unable to participate in an in-person meeting at that time, she had had no communication with the Respondents for months and that this letter was sent a matter of days after the Respondent had been informed by Mr Chase (ET1 § 148) that the Claimant was, ‘now being treated for depression caused by this situation’ and had an ‘anxiety condition, a panic disorder, hair loss and depression as a result of retaliation for whistleblowing.’

Her pleaded case in respect of this letter was that it was an act of direct discrimination related to her disability, coming as it did, only days after the Respondents had been directly informed of the diagnosis of depression. She maintained that the letter would not have been sent to an employee who had not been diagnosed with depression. She submits that at no point does the Tribunal consider whether the sending of the letter, with its request to attend a meeting was on grounds of her disability.

However, as Mr Bronze pointed out in the course of his submissions, the Tribunal did make a series of findings under the hearing ‘Direct Discrimination’ at §§417 to 425 and in particular at §424 expressly held that the letter ‘was not less favourable treatment that is to say such a letter would have been sent to a non-disabled employee in the same way’. It also considered and rejected the Claimant’s case regarding the treatment afforded to a comparator, at §425.

It seems to me that this criticism is unfounded, and the Tribunal did address the Claimant’s case in full when one considers the judgment in the round and pieces together the different sections where the relevant evidence is considered and then the law applied. I would therefore dismiss this ground of appeal.

Under this Ground, the Claimant complains that the Tribunal erred in failing to consider one of her disclosures to be qualifying protected disclosures under section 43C (2) Employment Rights Act 1998. The disclosure in question was made to Mr Almond, the investigating auditor appointed by the First Respondent to consider the Claimant’s previous disclosures.

Section 43C (2)) provides,

“A worker who, in accordance with a procedure whose use by him is authorised by his employer, makes a qualifying disclosure to a person other than his employer, is to be treated for the purposes of this Part as making the qualifying disclosure to his employer.”

Mr Bronze submitted that for a disclosure to fall within this section, the ‘authorisation’ given by the employer in relation to use of a procedure needed expressly to extend to making qualifying disclosures. It was not, he submitted, sufficient, that a procedure was authorised for use by the employer during which the worker reasonably made a qualifying disclosure. He said that on the facts in this case, the remit of the investigation which Mr Almond was retained to investigate was limited to the qualifying disclosures already made by the Claimant and therefore the disclosures she made to him during that investigation did not qualify for protection.

Mr Bronze did not cite before me any authority or guidance or other legislative interpretation materials in support of that submission. The Tribunal did not address this issue in substance in its judgment and did not cite any authority on this issue.

In Brothers of Charity Services Merseyside v Eleady-Cole [2001] 1 WLUK 466, Commissioner Howell QC was asked to consider the ambit of section 43C (2) in the context of a claim for automatic unfair dismissal contrary to section 103 ERA 1996. In that case, counsel for the respondent made a very similar submission to Mr Bronze, namely that the provision cannot be construed, ‘entirely literally’ and therefore, ‘the types of procedures, authorisations and disclosures to be held within Section 43C(2) should be restricted to the kind of situation where an employer sets up a specific procedure for permitting employees to make qualifying disclosures to it or by setting up another person or body with some authority to take specific action in consequence of whatever a worker discloses to him or it’. The EAT in that case clearly rejected that submission but found that it was unnecessary for them to give an exhaustive definition of the kind of procedures which could fall within section 43C (2). On the facts, a confidential telephone report service established under the respondent’s employee assistance programme was capable on the facts of being such a procedure, not least because on the tribunal’s findings the report service was set up under a contract between the employer and the reporting service company and it was designed so that the company would report back to the employer in the event of any disclosures.

In light of that determination, the question of whether a procedure is one which is ‘authorised’ by the employer is one of fact for the tribunal, bearing in mind the protective purpose of the provision, which is to ensure that there is adequate protection for workers making disclosures which are in the public interest. Where the disclosure is made in the context of a process which has been established by the employer for workers to raise concerns or to have complaints examined or investigated, it is generally reasonable to expect such disclosures to enjoy the same protection as ones made directly to the employer, or to put it the other way around, an employer cannot avoid disclosures being protected merely by pointing to the absence of an employment relationship between it and the person receiving the disclosure. The role of the tribunal, therefore, is to determine whether a procedure established by employer was one which either expressly, or impliedly or could be expected to be used by workers to raise protected disclosures.

By way of example, where an employer engages counsel to conduct an inquiry into certain identified allegations of wrongdoing and to report to the employer on their findings, and during the course of which investigation a worker makes allegations which due to their content would qualify as protected disclosures, that would generally be a ‘procedure’ which had been ‘authorised by the employer’ for the purposes of section 43C (2). Where such a process is being properly used by the worker at the employer’s suggestion or even requirement, it would, in my judgment, to be to read the provision too narrowly to suggest that unless counsel’s terms of reference or instructions expressly permitted additional disclosures to be made, no protection would be available to the worker making the otherwise qualifying disclosure. Indeed, it would potentially undermine the purpose of section 43C (2) if an employer were able to sidestep protection for a whistleblower merely by appointing an external investigator as opposed to one of his own employees.

The Tribunal dealt with the issue at paragraph 435 of its reasons. It did not set out the section or any of the relevant caselaw. It did not appear to be aware of the factual issues it needed to address, because it found as follows,

“The disclosure was not made to the claimant’s employer. The disclosure does not relate to a failure by a person other than her employer. Nor is the disclosure made to a person who has legal responsibility for the failure. Mr Almond was appointed as an auditor he does not have any responsibility within the respondent. The Tribunal rejected this as a PD.”

The only sentence in the judgment which makes any finding relevant to section 43C (2) is therefore, ‘he does not have any responsibility within the respondent’. The Tribunal misdirected itself in law regarding section 43C (2) and consequently failed to appreciate that it needed to consider the nature of Mr Almond’s appointment, his role, including the fact that he was appointed specifically to investigate the existing protected disclosures and to report back to the First Respondent. Against the background of the Claimant’s concerns that the alleged misconduct had been ignored or downplayed by the Respondents and that insufficient measures had been taken to ensure that similar events could not happen again in future and it was not only foreseeable but highly likely that the Claimant and maybe other witnesses would not only repeat existing disclosures, but also provide information which revealed related concerns or evidence of continuing issues. The Tribunal wholly failed to consider the purpose of section 43C (2) or any of the factual material before it as to the circumstances of the disclosures to Mr Almond.

Further, and in any event, in limiting its factual consideration solely to the question Mr Almond’s ‘responsibility within’ the First Respondent, the Tribunal misdirected itself in law. As I have explained, section 43C (2) concerns disclosures made to third parties who by definition are external to the employer’s organisation and therefore very unlikely to have ‘responsibility within’ it. To therefore apply the test of whether Mr Almond had ‘responsibility within’ the First Respondent’s organisation was a misdirection: such a test had the effect of depriving section 43C (2) of all effect and meaning.

I have allowed the appeal, and the case will be remitted to be heard again before a different Tribunal. When the case is considered by that tribunal, it must do so afresh and without regard to any of the findings made in the previous judgment, including those in respect of which this appeal has not succeeded and those which were not under challenge or which I have not specifically addressed in this judgment. It is my judgment that the lack of consideration of many of the issues in the case has potentially affected all the issues and deprived the Claimant of a fair trial of her case and it is not possible now to rely on any of those findings.