The two claimants were contract workers. They had been banned from working on the principal's sites and claimed race discrimination.
But they issued their claims at tribunal more than three months after the last time on which they were refused entry to the site. In ordinary terms that would be out of time - but they claimed that the discriminatory act was a continuing one and so time had not stopped running. They lost at tribunal and appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
The EAT upheld the tribunal's decision. There was no continuing act; the ban was a one-off decision. At the Court of Appeal it was argued that, even though the relationship between the men and the party that imposed the ban had come to an end, there was a continuing regime. That couldn't be the case, the Court of Appeal held. The ban was the equivalent of an employer dismissing an employee. It was a one-off act.
So the floodgates remain closed, for now at least, on these sorts of agency worker claims being brought long after the imposition of a ban.
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