The claimant, a Polish GP, alleged discrimination on grounds of, inter alia, race and sex, breach of contract and unfair dismissal. The potentially unfair reasons for the dismissal advanced by the respondent were based on i) capability ii) some other substantial reason and iii) ‘statutory restriction’ argument. There were five separate incidents involving the claimant which led the employer to have serious misgivings about her ability to carry out her job. 

Whilst only one of them led to misconduct charges, others related to breaches of procedure or poor clinical judgement. The thrust of the claimant’s argument was that the ‘incidents’ should not at any stage have been viewed together because they were categorised in different ways. An argument was also advanced throughout that the respondent should have remedied each situation with training and support. The claims were rejected in their entirety.

PRACTICAL LESSONS

As resources in the health service are squeezed, this case is of note as the Trust initially gave an undertaking to expend resources in helping to ‘remediate’ the claimant and deal with known concerns surrounding her practice. Of crucial importance, however, was the finding of the tribunal that this was ‘not an unlimited undertaking to fund remediation’ and thus the respondent was afforded a level of discretion as to how any plans would be developed and executed. The fact that further remediation was found to likely be ‘extremely expensive and resource-intensive’ was an important factor and the respondent was vindicated in deciding that no to fund any further courses/training was reasonable in the circumstances.