In AYZ v BZA the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has granted a permanent anonymity order to a claimant in Employment Tribunal proceedings in accordance with section 1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 (SOAA).
SOAA provides lifelong anonymity to complainants in sexual offence cases.
The EAT overturned the decision of the employment tribunal judge who had rejected the order on the grounds that it derogated from the principle of open justice.
The claimant had filed a police report in 2023 concerning alleged sexual assault by the respondent but this allegation did not form part of the claimant's tribunal proceedings nor did the existence of the police report. These facts had not been brought to the tribunal's attention in the application for anonymity.
Despite the fact that the respondent had not been questioned, arrested or charged the complaint constituted an allegation of a sexual offence under section 1(1) of SOAA.
Cavanagh J held that tribunal judgments are not exempt from the anonymity provisions of SOAA. Granting anonymity in the tribunal and appeal proceedings was the only way to ensure compliance with SOAA otherwise there was an unacceptable risk of jigsaw identification (allowing information from other judgments being pieced together to identify the claimant). It made no sense for the claimant to be named in the main proceedings while being anonymised in relation to the sexual assault allegation.
The EAT took a number of measures to protect anonymity including issuing two separate judgments with a significant time gap between them and no apparent link to each other. Random initials were used for the parties, case numbers were omitted, hearing dates and counsels' names were removed and neither the ET judge nor the EAT judge who made the orders were named.
The EAT emphasised that the decision did not imply that the ET judge had made an incorrect decision. The EAT decision was made based on new evidence.
The respondents did not want anonymity to be granted because the allegations were unrelated o the tribunal proceedings. The judge had sympathy with this submission but concluded that an anonymity order was the only way to ensure compliance with SOAA.
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