East Midlands landlord ordered to pay former worker £50,000 in employment tribunal

News18.09.237.00 AM by James Riding

An East Midlands landlord has been ordered to pay a former member of staff £50,000 following an employment tribunal.

A village in Northamptonshire, where the landlord is based (picture: Alamy)

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An East Midlands landlord has been ordered to pay a former member of staff £50,000 following an employment tribunal #UKhousing

Greatwell Homes, which owns 5,200 properties in Northamptonshire, was ordered to pay compensation to former employee Rachel Smith at a court in Cambridge in June.

Ms Smith worked for Greatwell as business improvement analyst from March 2019 to September 2021.

In a judgement, employment judge Richard Wood concluded that Ms Smith was treated “less favourable” by Greatwell on the grounds that she was on maternity leave at the time, contrary to Section 18 of the Equality Act 2010.

Ms Smith “suffered a detriment in the grounds that she was on maternity leave at the relevant time” contrary to the Employment Rights Act 1996, the judge added.

Ms Smith, who now works for PA Housing as resident insight analyst, told Inside Housing: “I am delighted at the outcome of the tribunal, and feel completely vindicated by the judging panel’s decision to find in my favour in all five claims. The settlement figure agreed by Greatwell Homes speaks for itself.

“The last two years have been extremely stressful, made much worse by repeated letters from Greatwell Homes, informing me that they would pursue me for their legal costs to the sum of £25,000 if I lost the claim, which according to them I had very little chance of succeeding in. This added significant extra pressure and made an already very difficult time a lot worse.”

Julie Robinson, executive director at Greatwell Homes, whose remit includes responsibility for HR, said: “We take our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion at work very seriously and pride ourselves on being a flexible employer of choice.

“We take a proactive approach to ensuring staff and customers are treated fairly with monitoring and actions undertaken by our employee diversity working group and our ongoing work with the Housing Diversity Network to becoming an accredited organisation.

“This tribunal case relates back to 2020 and we recognise our focus needs to be on taking the time to reflect fully and consider any learnings and recommendations from the employment tribunal’s ruling.”

Responding to Ms Smith’s comments, Ms Robinson said: “We regret that Ms Smith felt distress during this process. Over the last three years, we have learnt a great deal and continue to put things in place to ensure all staff are treated fairly and that we continue to be a diverse employer of choice”.