Jackson Osborne win discrimination claim against The Royal Mint

In a decision handed down by the Employment Tribunals in Cardiff on 17 July 2024, The Royal Mint was found guilty of disability discrimination against its ex-HR Director, Sarah Bradley.

As we wrote last January when the trial was still ongoing:

Jackson Osborne is acting for Sarah Bradley, ex-HR Director at The Royal Mint.  Mrs Bradley is suing The Royal Mint at the Employment Tribunals in Cardiff for disability and sex discrimination after she resigned in June 2022 while suffering the effects of changes in prescriptions of medications for her mental health and for menopause.  Mrs Bradley had had a very successful career of over thirteen years at the Mint.  She was praised by the Chief Executive Officer, Anne Jessopp, for her success, being awarded a significant pay rise by the Board of the Mint only a weeks before her resignation.

Expert psychiatrists, instructed separately by both Mrs Bradley and The Royal Mint in the course of proceedings, each confirmed that the change in medications was likely to have had a significant effect on Mrs Bradley’s decision to resign and that, as part of her condition, she would have been masking the true state of her mental health.  However, when Mrs Bradley asked to rescind her resignation a few weeks later explaining that the medication has caused her to behave irrationally, Mrs Jessopp refused her request.

The decision is available here.  In essence, while the Tribunal was sympathetic that Ms Jessopp did not intend to discriminate against Mrs Bradley, it was dumbfounded as to why she did not reconsider her position after Mrs Bradley explained the issues she’d had with changes to her medication.  As part of her masking behaviour, Mrs Bradley had indicated that the reason for her resignation was to seek higher paid work.  Ms Jessopp held onto that as being the true reason but in a key passage, Employment Judge Moore wrote:

… the respondent reached their decision based on their own observations, opinions about the contextual background and judgments of the claimant’s behaviours at the time. Whilst we acknowledge the respondent were initially entitled to have taken the claimant at her word as to the reasons for her resignation in our judgment this position should have been reassessed around 27 / 28 July 2022. The respondent was not qualified to make those assessments once they were on notice of what the claimant told them had really been going on in her mind at the relevant time.  They were not qualified to do so and their disbelief of the claimant caused them to close their minds to any suggestion that the claimant’s resignation was attributable to her disabilities. The Tribunal was unable to understand why the respondent did not pause and take some proper informed medical advice concerning the disabilities, the impact on the claimant’s behaviour and prognosis to then be in a position to truly assess whether the refusal to allow the rescindment would achieve their stated aims.

The matter will now be listed for a hearing on remedy to decide the level of compensation to be awarded to Mrs Bradley.  There will be many factors to consider but, having regard to her six figure salary and gold plated civil service pension, the potential award could be as much as £1.7 million.