In Leicester City Council v Parmar [2025] EWCA Civ 952, the Court of Appeal upheld a tribunal’s decision that a Council had discriminated against an employee because of race. The employee alleged that she was subjected to false allegations, transferred from her role, and placed under disciplinary investigation, only for that investigation to conclude with no case to answer. By contrast, white colleagues facing comparable or more serious conduct issues were dealt with more leniently.
The tribunal found that the employee had established facts from which an inference of discrimination could be drawn. Where a disciplinary investigation might otherwise have been justified, employees of a different race were dealt with through informal steps such as mediation. The tribunal also drew adverse inferences from the Council’s conscious decision not to disclose highly relevant material, which prompted a new investigator to bring the disciplinary process to an end. Taken together, the tribunal concluded that the Council had failed to prove, on the balance of probabilities, a non-discriminatory explanation for the treatment.
On appeal, the Council argued that the tribunal had erred in its comparator analysis and in its approach to the burden of proof. The Court of Appeal (Elisabeth Laing LJ giving the leading judgment) rejected both grounds. It held that the tribunal had made extensive factual findings which justified treating the comparators as sufficiently similar, and that their more favourable treatment supported the inference of race discrimination. The disclosure failures had been properly considered as part of the evidential picture. The tribunal had not applied an automatic shift in the burden of proof but had legitimately drawn inferences from the Council’s conduct. Its rejection of the Council’s explanations was within the range of reasonable conclusions.
The Court of Appeal emphasised the need for appellate courts to avoid over-scrutinising tribunal reasoning or substituting their own views for those of the fact-finder. Tribunal judgments should be read fairly and as a whole rather than analysed in a hypercritical or overly technical way.
This case highlights the significance of comparators in establishing inferences of discrimination and the evidential consequences of disclosure failures. It also underlines the importance for employers of retaining and disclosing relevant documentation from internal processes.Leicester City Council loses second appeal in discrimination case – BBC News
