Date of a detriment

The facts

Paul Cure and Peter Fraser's employer announced in April 2001 that it would pay its permanent employees a bonus when a phase of work was completed. In November 2002, it announced that the bonus would be paid the following month.

As fixed-term employees, Cure and Fraser were excluded from the bonus. They claimed that they had been subjected to a detriment under the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002. The employer argued that the claim was not valid because the date of any detriment was April 2001, at which point the regulations had not been in force.

The ruling

The EAT held that the date of the detriment was November 2002, when the decision to pay the bonus was implemented. It added that it might be "unattractive" for discrimination to be allowed just because the decision to discriminate was made before it became unlawful.

Coutts & Co & Royal Bank of Scotland v Cure and Fraser UKEAT/0395/04