Vindicated

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Bindu knew she was the third person of Indian origin that her line manager, the director of adult social care and safeguarding at the council, who is white, had disciplined in the last five years. None of her white colleagues had experienced such treatment.

The way she was being treated had a profound emotional impact. “I wasn’t sleeping, I was feeling so much anxiety. I was tearful and had panic attacks at the thought of work meetings,” she says. After she explained what was happening to her GP, he signed her off work for a month. 

 Bindu was baffled that a lot of her investigatory interview was taken up by her manager repeatedly asking her why one of her team leaders had copied Bindu into an email sent about safeguarding issues. Bindu didn’t know how to answer this question. “I asked her, how is that my mistake? It’s not as if I can control somebody sending emails?

“Something was clearly not right. I felt like my manager was trying to cover up these safeguarding failings.”

Bindu decided she would internally blow the whistle on race discrimination, as well as the safeguarding failings within her department that had been reported to her in the email from her colleague. So she contacted the mayor of the council.

Shortly after, Bindu’s manager was removed from the investigation and replaced with another director from another department. In May 2021, this new person swiftly closed the disciplinary investigation and Bindu was issued with a letter that said she had no case to answer.

“I felt vindicated, but I felt angry as well,” Bindu says, with questions remaining about her line manager’s treatment of her. “How could she have got away with it? Why was she doing this to me? The only thing I could pin was my race.”

With UNISON’s support, Bindu lodged a race discrimination claim with the employment tribunal.

Worse to come

After the investigation had concluded, Bindu was required to return to her role. Despite asking to be moved to another area, she was still under the same line manager who she had a pending tribunal claim against.

“I felt like I had to walk on eggshells. Not only that, but there’d been no repercussions for her, I didn’t feel that she’d learned anything from it,” she says. “In our one-to-ones she kept asking me how I felt about my employment tribunal claim, and what my views were now. I said to her, ‘I still don’t understand why you did what you did, and I’d like somebody independent to look at that.’”

And then, another bombshell. In April 2022, Bindu was called to a meeting by the strategic director of the council and dismissed from her role.

The reason given was that the council had ‘lost confidence’ in her. Bindu suspects that the real reason was because she hadn’t withdrawn her tribunal claim. “By this time, I just felt that they can do anything they want.”

After three decades of a thriving career in social work, Bindu was unemployed. “It was really difficult emotionally, practically and financially,” she says. Although her husband was able to pick up the shortfall at first, they later had to sell their house and downsize to adjust to the loss in income.

Getting a fair hearing

In January 2023, the employment tribunal began. The hearing lasted five days, and Bindu was on the witness stand for the best part of a day, which was exhausting. 

Then, when her line manager was up for cross-examination, something unexpected happened. Bindu began to feel reassured. She felt her case was finally getting a fair hearing.

“[My manager] could not explain why she did what she did. That was really helpful to me, because I realised I hadn’t done anything wrong, she was only doing this to me because of my race.”

When the judgment arrived two months later, in March 2023, the employment tribunal sided with Bindu. It ruled that “race had played a part” in her treatment. 

A key factor in the judge’s decision was the council’s failure to disclose the minutes and notes of the nine investigatory interviews that Bindu’s line manager had conducted with colleagues, inferring that the council’s concealment of these notes meant that they were trying to hide something. 

“The judge picked up that there was nothing of substance,” she says. “It still baffles me. I’m very competent, I had a good reputation. I wasn’t under-performing.”

However, instead of accepting this decision, the council decided to appeal it. The role of the employment appeals tribunal (EAT) is to assess whether a tribunal has made any errors in law and, when Bindu’s case was heard at the EAT, the judge found no errors. He upheld the original tribunal’s judgment and called the council’s appeal “pernickety”.

Then, despite having lost twice, the council escalated the case to the Court of Appeal, using taxpayer money to fight an increasingly expensive legal battle. In July 2025, the Court of Appeal dismissed the case. Bindu had won again. Three courts had ruled that Leicester City Council’s actions against her were racist.

Bindu is relieved, and grateful to UNISON for its support. Yet the victory is bittersweet: her health has suffered and her employment has ended. Now, aged 60, she does not plan to look for another job, wishing instead to focus on looking after herself, and her health. 

“It has taken a toll on me and it’s taken a toll on my family. It wasn’t just me that went through that process, it was my husband and my children. And if it wasn’t for their support, I wouldn’t have got through it. They have supported me 100%.”

Bindu still has a second claim with the employment tribunal, for unfair dismissal and victimisation. She anticipates another lengthy battle through the courts. “If they do what they did with the first case, that will be another four years of my life fighting them through the court system.”