The former head of legal at Peterborough City Council has won an employment tribunal claim against the authority over racial harassment.
Rochelle Tapping, a leading figure in the local government legal community, lost her £110,000 year role as the council’s director of legal and governance after a recommendation from the council’s chief executive, Matthew Gladstone, that she had failed her six-month probation. Tapping, who was employed by the council between 14 November 2022 to 31 August 2023, is black and of Jamaican and Caribbean ethnic origin.
The tribunal dismissed 41 complaints but upheld two of race related harassment. The first concerned a comment made by Gladstone, who asked Tapping if she was friends with Adsuwa Omoregie, an interim head of legal who started at Peterborough in February 2023 and also a black woman. Gladstone told the tribunal he may have asked if they had worked together and did so ‘because it is not uncommon for senior leaders to recruit people they have previously worked with or who are otherwise professionally known to them’.
Employment Judge Tynan, in a published judgment, said: ‘We do not accept the claimant’s efforts to portray Mr Gladstone as holding or expressing a racist viewpoint, or that it was “a deliberate attempt” to make her and Ms Omoregie “feel uncomfortable”.
‘Notwithstanding the claimant has in our judgement overstated the impact upon her and wrongly attributed a malicious motivation to Mr Gladstone, and that she did not initially complain about the matter, we ultimately conclude that it was reasonable for her to be offended by the comment because of the implicit suggestion, as she perceived it, that two black women in senior roles must know one another, alternatively that Ms Omoregie had not been recruited by the claimant entirely on merit.
‘Whilst there are no grounds to infer these were Mr Gladstone’s views in the matter, we do not consider that it was unreasonable for the claimant to be offended by the question and to experience an adverse work environment.’
Tynan also upheld a complaint that the council’s chief finance officer, Cecilie Booth, shared holiday photos from Brazil of almost naked black women to a work WhatsApp group on 11 April 2023. Whilst Tynan said he was ‘certain that Ms Booth did not set out to offend’, he highlighted that Tapping was the only black member of the group.
‘That fact, combined with the picture’s focus on the black performer’s exposed buttocks, rather than for example her abilities (or otherwise) as a performer or dancer, lead us to conclude that the image can be said to relate to race and that it was ultimately reasonable for the claimant to feel that it created a degrading environment for her and black women in general.
‘We think it did offend her sense of what it is and what it takes to be a successful professional black woman, and for that reason we uphold the complaint.’
Tynan dismissed 41 other alleged detriments and said the case would be listed for a remedy hearing in due course.
