Three white police officers who were passed over for promotion in favour of an ethnic minority candidate have won their race discrimination claim.
A tribunal ruled that the “white British” officers were overlooked by Thames Valley Police because of their race and that an ethnic minority sergeant was promoted “without any competitive assessment process taking place” to improve diversity among senior staff.
Detective Inspector Phillip Turner-Robson, Inspector Graham Horton and custody inspector Kirsteen Bishop brought employment tribunal proceedings when Superintendent Emma Baillie moved Sergeant Sidhu into the newly-created role of detective inspector in the force’s priority crime team without carrying out a competitive process or advertising the job vacancy to its workforce.
The tribunal heard that the sergeant had not even been made inspector when she was promoted to detective inspector.
It concluded that Baillie “jumped the gun” in relation to promoting Sidhu to “make it happen” on the instruction of the Deputy Chief Constable and “in her eagerness took the decision without thinking it through”.
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The tribunal said: “She then tried to retrospectively justify it by saying lateral moves were part of the BAME Progression Program which clearly did not exist at the time. Superintendent Baillie and no doubt the Deputy Chief Constable had been warned of the risk of operating such a policy.”
The officers, who had between 19 and 26 years of experience with the force between them, were blocked from applying for the role, an employment tribunal was told.
The tribunal heard that Mark Taylor, who at the time had been a delivery manager in the personal development and leadership team, had noted in an email as far back as 2020 that Thames Valley’s aim to fast-track BAME officers constituted positive discrimination rather than positive action.
The tribunal concluded: “Superintendent Baillie’s decision to move PC Sidhu into the Detective Inspector PCT vacant role without undertaking any competitive exercise clearly constituted positive discrimination and it went beyond mere encouraging, disadvantaging those officers who did not share PC Sidhu’s protected characteristic of race and who were denied the opportunity for the role and was not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”
The panel also said it was surprised that no equality impact assessment had been carried out by the force. It acknowledged that it may not be Baillie or Chief Constable Jason Hogg’s job to carry out such an assessment but said there was a “rather cavalier approach to equal opportunities by both of them” in failing to instruct someone in HR to carry one out.
It was also described as “astonishing” that Baillie and Hogg had not received any specific diversity and equality training in more than two decades.
Thames Valley Police acknowledged the tribunal’s decision and said it is carefully considering next steps. In a statement, it said: “The force is committed to providing a workplace where each and every member of the workforce can fulfil their potential, and that is representative of the communities we are privileged to serve. This is essential for building trust and confidence in policing, while providing positive role models to attract future colleagues into policing from all backgrounds.”
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