Race and sex discrimination: Proper approach to issue of continuing acts of discrimination

Key points

• In Hendricks v The Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis [2003] IRLR 96, the Court of Appeal holds that an employment tribunal did not err in law in deciding that it had jurisdiction to hear a police officer's race and sex discrimination complaints, notwithstanding that none of the numerous alleged incidents of discriminatory treatment complained of occurred in the three-month period preceding the presentation of her originating application.
• The employee was entitled to attempt to show that the alleged incidents, which involved more than 50 police officers from 1989 onwards and a number of different workplaces, were not isolated and unconnected acts, but were linked to one another, and were evidence of a continuing discriminatory state of affairs covered by the concept of "an act extending over a period" for the purposes of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976.