Y H M Makram v Amazon Development Centre (Scotland) Ltd: 8001144/2025
EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS (SCOTLAND)
Case No 8001144/2025
Between
Y H M MakramClaimantAmazon Development Centre (Scotland) LimitedRespondent
Before
Employment Judge M A MacleodDate 3 August 2026
JUDGMENT
The Judgment of the Employment Tribunal is that the claimant’s application to amend his claim dated 12 May 2026 is refused.
REASONS
[1]The Employment Tribunal directed in this case that a Preliminary Hearing should take place in order to determine the claimant’s application to amend his claim dated 12 May 2026, which was opposed by the respondent. With the agreement of the parties, this Hearing was conducted in chambers by the Employment Judge on the basis of written submissions alone.[2]This case has a somewhat lengthy and complex history, which is relevant to the determination of this application. Accordingly, I set out below the background to the application; the application itself and the claimant’s submissions in support; the respondent’s objections and submissions in support of those; a short summary of the relevant law; and the decision with reasons. ETZ4(WR)[3]The claimant represents himself, and has set out his application and submissions on his own behalf. The respondent has responded through their solicitors.
Background
[4]The claimant initially presented his claim with the assistance of legal representation, submitting claims of disability discrimination under sections 13, 15, 20/21 and 27 of the Equality Act 2010 (EqA), on the basis of his asserted disability of depression.[5]A helpful summary of the development of the claim is provided in Employment Judge Kemp’s Preliminary Hearing Judgment dated 10 February 2026, at paragraphs 4 to 8. In paragraph 6, he confirmed that the claimant had initially pled indirect discrimination and harassment under sections 19 and 26 of EqA, but later withdrew those claims, after which a Judgment to confirm the dismissal of those complaints.[6]It is clear from the background that the claimant has previously sought to amend his claim, and Employment Judge Kemp’s detailed Judgment sets out the decision which was reached upon the earlier application, granting the application but only in part.[7]It is also important to note that the original ET1 was presented to the Tribunal on 7 May 2025, and that there is, as yet, no final Hearing listed in the case.[8]It is clear, on reviewing the file, that there has been a very significant volume of correspondence and material presented to the Tribunal associated with the application to amend. I regard some, at least, of this material as irrelevant to the fundamental question of whether or not the application should be granted. Application to Amend and Submissions[9]The claimant’s application, dated 12 May 2026, set out a number of headings under which the claimant advanced his argument that his claim should be amended. 10.Under “The acts and continuing course of conduct sought to be added”, the claimant complained of the respondent’s continuing failure to implement the workplace adjustments recommended for the claimant by Occupational Health in relation to the claimant’s documented disability. He relied upon the failure to:a. provide alternative work,b. redeploy him to a different team or role,c. modify his work patterns and management systems,d. provide a mentor or buddy;e. make phased-return arrangements;f. provide neurodiversity-informed support following the claimant’s July 2025 diagnoses of ASD and ADHD; andg. conduct a fresh Stress Risk Assessment. 11.He identified the most recent failure as the respondent’s “affirmative decision”, evidenced by an email of 5 May 2026, to proceed with individual redundancy consultation on the claimant’s software development management role. 12.The “Heads of claim affected” were said to be: a. Fresh acts of victimisation under section 27 of EqA, based on the protected acts of 12 September 2024 (grievance) and the claimant’s presentation of his ET1 in 2025; b. A continuing failure to make reasonable adjustments under sections 20 and 21, read with section 39 and Schedule 8. The relevant PCPs were said to be: i. The requirement that the claimant engage in the standard duties of the Manager III, Software Development role; and ii. From late October 2025, the requirement that the claimant participate in individual redundancy consultation. 13.Under “Documentary basis”, the claimant maintained that the continuing course of conduct was evidenced by a continuous series of OH reports issued by the respondent’s OH provider between 9 January 2025 and 30 April 2026, setting out recommendations for workplace adjustments which were not implemented by the respondent. 14.The claimant then set out “Selkent balancing factors”, arguing that the proposed amendment amounted to a re-labelling of existing facts already pled, or arose out of the same factual matrix already before the Tribunal. He characterised the amendment as relating to a continuing failure by the respondent to implement reasonable adjustments. He argued that the application was made at the earliest practicable opportunity following the most recent act, and that any prejudice to the respondent was limited. 15.He maintained under “Time limits and continuing act” that there was no impact upon time bar given that they were part of a series of continuing acts. 16.He went on to submit that no requirement was placed upon him to seek ACAS Early Conciliation in relation to an amendment, and that the application should be dealt with on the papers only. 17.On 13 July 2026, the claimant provided further written submissions in support of his application and in opposition to the respondent’s objections to the amendment. 18.He described the respondent’s opposition as “legally flawed, factually misleading and fundamentally at odds with the overriding objective of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024”, and a “tactical manoeuvre” designed to shield a continuing course of discriminatory conduct. 19.He argued that the claim could not, practicably, have been pleaded sooner; that the prejudice would fall entirely on a self-representing disabled claimant as opposed to a large multinational corporation represented by “the world’s largest law firm”. 20.The final hearing will not be delayed, and in any event the respondent had, he said, already delayed the final Hearing being listed. 21.The respondent’s argument that this was the fourth amendment of the claim and that the claimant’s handling of the case is disorganised or vexatious ignores the context. Previous amendments were all allowed by the Tribunal. in any event, the need for further amendment only arises due to the respondent’s ongoing conduct. Respondent’s Objections and Submissions 22.On 12 May 2026, Ms Ross-Seccombe, solicitor for the respondent, submitted objections to the application to amend the claim. 23.She acknowledged that parts of the amendment overlapped factually with matters already pleaded, the application would expand the scope, complexity and duration of the Hearing, in circumstances where the claim had already been amended multiple times. 24.Ms Ross-Seccombe maintained that this was the fourth amendment application advanced by the claimant, which has required the respondent repeatedly to respond to evolving and expanding allegations over an extended period, amounting to cumulative prejudice accruing due to the continual amendment. 25.There are already, she said, allegations in the grounds of claim as amended covering the OH recommendations, the alleged failure to facilitate redeployment or to implement adjustments, redundancy consultations, alleged psychiatric deterioration and alleged victimisation linked to protected acts. 26.She argued that the proposed amendment does not merely clarify the existing issues, but seeks to widen the litigation to take account of events in May 2026 and by reframing separate management decisions as a continuing course of conduct. The events were long known to the claimant and are already central to the proceedings, and the claimant has already had multiple opportunities to amend his claim. 27.There will, she said, be significant prejudice to the respondent by expanding the factual and legal scope of the proceedings, increasing “disclosure obligations”, potentially requiring further witness evidence, requiring reconsideration of the list of issues and preparations for the hearing, and increasing the complexity and length of the hearing. 28.The respondent also expressed concern about the potential that there would be further amendments on an open-ended basis. 29.She therefore invited the Tribunal to refuse the application. The Relevant Law 30.In determining any application to amend, it is essential to have regard to the following. 31.There is a useful formulation of the types of amendment which are typically put forward by parties in Tribunal proceedings in Harvey in Industrial Relations and Employment Law, Division T at paragraph 311.03: “A distinction may be drawn between(i) amendments which are merely designed to alter the basis of an existing claim, but without purporting to raise a new distinct head of complaint;(ii) amendments which add or substitute a new cause of action but one which is linked to, or arises out of the same facts as, the original claim; and(iii) amendments which add or substitute a wholly new claim or cause of action which is not connected to the original claim at all.” 32.An important authority in this area is Selkent Bus Co Ltd v Moore 1996 ICR 836. At p.843, Mummery J, as he then was, said: “(4) Whenever the discretion to grant an amendment is invoked, the tribunal should take into account all the circumstances and should balance the injustice and hardship of allowing the amendment against the injustice and hardship of refusing it. (5) What are the relevant circumstances? It is impossible and undesirable to attempt to list them exhaustively, but the following are certainly relevant. (a) The nature of the amendment. Applications to amend are of many different kinds, ranging, on the one hand, from the correction of clerical and typing errors, the addition of factual details to existing allegations and the addition or substitution of other labels for facts already pleaded to, on the other hand, the making of entirely new factual allegations which change the basis of the existing claim. The tribunal have to decide whether the amendment sought is one of the minor matters or is a substantial alteration pleading a new cause of action. (b) The applicability of time limits. If a new complaint or cause of action is proposed to be added by way of amendment, it is essential for the tribunal to consider whether that complaint is out of time and, if so, whether the time limit should be extended under the applicable statutory provisions, e.g. in the case of unfair dismissal, section 67 of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978. (c) The timing and manner of the application. An application should not be refused solely because there has been a delay in making it. There are no time limits laid down in the Regulations of 1993 for the making of amendments. The amendments may be made at any time – before, at, even after the hearing of the case. Delay in making the application is, however, a discretionary factor. It is relevant to consider why the application was not made earlier and why it is now being made: for example, the discovery of new facts or new information appearing from documents disclosed on discovery. Whenever taking any factors into account, the paramount considerations are the relative injustice and hardship involved in refusing or granting an amendment. Questions of delay, as a result of adjournments, and additional costs, particularly if they are unlikely to be recovered by the successful party, are relevant in reaching a decision”. 33.In the well-known decision of Chandhok v Tirkey UKEAT.0190/14/KN, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (The Honourable Mr Justice Langstaff) stated: “17. I readily accept that Tribunals should provide straightforward, accessible and readily understandable fora in which disputes can be resolved speedily, effectively and with a minimum of complication. They were not at the outset designed to be populated by lawyers, and the fact that law now features so prominently before Employment Tribunals does not mean that those origins should be dismissed as of little value. Care must be taken to avoid such undue formalism as prevents a Tribunal getting to grips with those issues which really divide the parties. However, all that said, the starting point is that the parties must set out the essence of their respective cases on paper in respectively the ET1 and the answer to it. If it were not so, then there would be no obvious principle by which reference to any further document (witness statement, or the like) could be restricted. Such restriction is needed to keep litigation within sensible bounds, and to ensure that a degree of informality does not become unbridled licence. The ET1 and ET3 have an important function in ensuring that a claim is brought, and responded to, within stringent time limits. If a “claim” or a “case” is to be understood as being far wider than that which is set out in the ET1 or ET3, it would be open to a litigant after the expiry of any relevant time limit to assert that the case now put had all along been made, because it was “their case”, and in order to argue that the time limit had no application to that case could point to other documents or statements, not contained within the claim form. Such an approach defeats the purpose of permitting or denying amendments; it allows issues to be based on shifting sands; it ultimately denies that which clear-headed justice most needs, which is focus. It is an enemy of identifying, and in the light of the identification resolving, the central issues in dispute.
The Relevant Law
[18]In summary, a system of justice involves more than allowing parties at any time to raise the case which best seems to suit the moment from their perspective. It requires each party to know in essence what the other is saying, so they can properly meet it; so that they can tell if a Tribunal may have lost jurisdiction on time grounds; so that the costs incurred can be kept to those which are proportionate; so that the time needed for a case, and the expenditure which goes hand in hand with it, can be provided for both by the parties and by the Tribunal itself, and enable care to be taken that any one case does not deprive others of their fair share of the resources of the system. It should provide for focus on the central issues. That is why there is a system of claim and response, and why an Employment Tribunal should take very great care not to be diverted into thinking that the essential case is to be found elsewhere than in the pleadings.” Discussion and Decision 34.In this case, the claimant seeks to amend his claim further, following the receipt and granting of previous applications to amend. 35.The basis for the application is, in my view, relatively straightforward: the claimant wishes to have included within the existing claim further complaints about treatment which he has received from the respondent since the last time he amended his claim. The ongoing nature of the relationship between the parties is a complicating factor in the proceedings, as the claimant, perhaps inevitably, continues to believe that the respondent is acting unlawfully against him. 36.The respondent accepts, sensibly, that the objection to this application is not so much in relation to the novelty of facts or heads of claim newly pled but to the regularity of the process to which the claimant has had resort by applying to add to the claims before the Tribunal. 37.The claimant dismisses the respondent’s objection that this may encourage further claims to be added to the proceedings, by observing that if it were not for the employer’s conduct, there would be no need for such an application. With the greatest of respect to the claimant, this misses the point. The question of whether an application to amend should be granted or refused is not determined according to the merits of the position adopted by each party; the question is one of fairness, in the end, that is, whether it is in the interests of justice – to both parties – to allow the amendment to be granted. 38.The judgment in Chandhok is of considerable assistance in these circumstances, in my judgment. The need of clear-headed justice to have focus in the proceedings is of the highest priority; the risk that the parties, and the Tribunal, may become distracted, is a very real and present danger. 39.The central issue here in my judgment is whether the timing and manner of the application are such that it would be just to allow it to proceed, and in considering this question, I require to weigh up the relative prejudice to each party of the decision which I must make. 40.The claimant has, by his own admission, sought to amend his claim on a number of occasions prior to this application. On this occasion, he suggests that this is not a significant addition to his claim, but merely seeks to introduce further unlawful acts into the complaints already before the Tribunal. However, the timing and manner of the application are significant, in my view, not because they seek to introduce unusually novel heads of claim but because essentially the claimant is seeking to expand the claim to include new acts on a continuing basis. 41.The difficulty for the Tribunal, and for the respondent in particular, is that it places at risk the clear-headed justice which is required for these proceedings. There must be absolute clarity as to the claims which the respondent requires to defend itself against. If the claims are allowed to expand on this occasion, there appears to be little doubt that the claimant will continue to allege that the respondent has, on an ongoing basis, failed again and again to do what the law requires it to do. 42.However, this approach means that there is no finality in this litigation. The claimant’s claim is enshrined, as we see in Chandhok, in the ET1 as the Tribunal has allowed it to be amended. There must come a point where the claims are known and certain to all, and this application will have the effect, in my judgment, of disrupting that certainty and, in all likelihood, extending and complicating the final Hearing when it is convened. 43.The question of prejudice is of importance. The claimant is clearly of the view that since the respondent is a large organisation represented by a large and well known firm of solicitors the prejudice to them must be taken to be minimal. In my view, this is entirely unfair and unrealistic. The respondent is entitled to fair notice of the claims against them, and if the claims keep changing – if they find themselves on shifting sands – that would be extremely prejudicial to the respondent’s interests. 44.On the other hand, it is plain that the claimant has an extensive set of claims which are already before the Tribunal, and on which he may present his evidence at the final Hearing, to enable the Tribunal to reach a judgment about those complaints. Refusing this application will prejudice the claimant little, in my judgment. He will simply be deprived of the opportunity to continue to add claim upon claim when he has already committed himself to his claims and been allowed to refine those claims by the Tribunal. 45.There must be certainty in this process. In my judgment, it would be contrary to the interests of justice and to the overriding objective of the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure 2024 to allow the application to amend to be allowed. There is, in addition, no clear indication from the claimant that he would not seek to add further complaints to his claim, and this inclination must be tempered in the claimant. 46.The claimant has the right to apply to amend his claim, but it is a matter for the Tribunal to decide whether or not his application should be allowed. In all of the circumstances, it is my judgment that it would be unfair and prejudicial to the respondent to allow the claimant to amend his claim yet again in light of the context of this claim, and in light of the need to ensure that this claim proceed in due course to a Hearing before the Tribunal in which the issues are clear and certain for both parties. 47.Accordingly, the claimant’s application to amend dated 12 May 2026 is refused.