The Claimant, who was a Romany Gypsy, complained that the Respondent had refused to carry out the job evaluation for the Claimant several times which the Claimant claimed were acts of less favourable treatment. Other colleagues who were not Romany Gypsy were not wrongly graded and wrongly paid for 5 years. The ET dismissed all the Claimant’s claims, mostly on the basis that the ET did not accept the Claimant’s interpretation of events and therefore rejected her claim to have been subject of treatment which could be said to have been less favourable. Others were rejected because although the ET accepted that the events in question occurred, it accepted the explanation of the Respondent through its witnesses that the reason for such treatment was not related to the Claimant’s race. The Claimant appealed.

The EAT allowed the appeal in part. The ET had either failed to address or failed to give adequate reasons as to why it rejected the Claimant’s case that she had suffered direct race discrimination because she repeatedly made informal requests for her job grading to be re-evaluated which were not adequately addressed by the Respondent. However, the ET’s reasons were adequate to explain its rejection of the Claimant’s case that she had been discriminated against on grounds of race by failing to either to re-grade her role earlier or to back-date the ultimate re-grading of her role to the commencement of her employment.