Fresh evidence upended an ET’s credibility findings. What education HR should learn from Mayanja v City of Bradford MDC ([2025] EAT 160)

A brand-new Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) judgment is a timely reminder for schools and MATs: one overlooked email can unravel an entire case built on “credibility”. In Mayanja v City of Bradford MDC, the EAT set aside both liability and costs decisions and remitted all claims to a differently constituted tribunal after a post-hearing email surfaced stating, “we’d like to offer you the job.”

The case in a nutshell

• The claimant alleged he’d been offered a council role; the ET preferred the recruiting manager’s evidence, found the claimant not credible, and dismissed all claims (contract, race discrimination, victimisation, and harassment). Costs were awarded against him.

• After the hearing, the claimant found an email from the recruiting manager saying, “we’d like to offer you the job …” — a central document missing from the trial bundle.

• The ET reduced (but did not revoke) costs on reconsideration, yet did not revisit liability. The EAT held that was an error: the fresh evidence went to the heart of the ET’s credibility findings, so liability and costs were both set aside and the case was sent to a new tribunal.

• 
  

Why this matters for schools & MATs

Education HR often handles contested recruitment decisions, offer communications, archive searches, and bundles for litigation. This judgment highlights four practical pressure points:

1. Credibility is fragile if the paper trail is incomplete

   The ET had expressly preferred the manager’s evidence “where there was any conflict”. Once the “offer” email emerged, that overarching credibility assessment became “fundamentally unsafe,” so all findings fell.

2. Fresh evidence: use the right route, fast

   The EAT re-emphasised that new evidence is typically dealt with by reconsideration in the ET first, and referenced the well-known Ladd v Marshall criteria (diligence, influence, and credibility) alongside the EAT Practice Direction 2024. Here, given the unusual preparation orders and who was leading the bundle, the claimant’s reliance on the respondent’s disclosure was held reasonable.

3. Bundle responsibility and disclosure discipline

   The case management order placed primary responsibility for the bundle on the respondent. Failure to locate a key email (amid legacy archiving) proved pivotal. 160

4. Offer wording and recruitment practice

5. The missing email looked like an unconditional offer, contradicting the ET’s premise that the manager would not make offers before checks. Language matters: imprecise “offers” create legal risk and credibility problems if disputes arise.

Five takeaways for Education HR

1) Lock down your “offer” templates and channels

• Use conditional offer templates only (health, references, right-to-work, DBS, safeguarding clearance).

• Ban ad-hoc “offer” language in emails/texts/voicemails. Train recruiting managers not to “celebrate” a preferred candidate with offer-like wording.

2) Fix your archive search risk

• Audit email and ATS/MIS archives now. Legacy Outlook archives and disabled search indices were a real issue in this case. Ensure single search across live + archived mailboxes and that hiring managers know where recruitment correspondence must live.

3) Own the bundle

• If you’re respondent-side and tasked with bundle prep, implement a document sweep protocol: custodians, date ranges, keywords (“offer”, “conditional”, “start date”), and system-level searches of live + archived stores. Record what you did. It’s your best defence if something later surfaces.

4) Treat “fresh evidence” as an emergency

• If a critical document is found post-hearing, move quickly with an ET reconsideration application (the route the EAT expects), explaining why it matters and how/why it was missed; refer to the Ladd v Marshall principles on influence/credibility. The EAT stressed the role of reconsideration and showed flexibility given the unusual case management and disclosure posture.

5) Beware global credibility findings

• Internally (and when giving instructions to lawyers), avoid blanket “we prefer X on all conflicts” thinking. Decisions should be issue-by-issue, grounded in documents. The EAT’s concern was that one (now-undermined) premise about an offer infected the ET’s view across every claim.

• 
  

Practical checklist for Trusts (ready to implement)

• Wording: Replace any “We’d like to offer you the job” phrasing with “Subject to satisfactory [list checks], we intend to make an offer of employment.” Lock templates in your ATS and disable free-text manager emails at offer stage.

• Governance: Policy add-on requiring all candidate communications to be sent via HR-controlled templates; prohibit managers from issuing offers directly.

• Discovery readiness: Keep a Recruitment Litigation Pack: vacancy approval, advert, interview notes/scores, draft/issued offer wording, pre-employment checks, email trails.

• Archive assurance: IT to certify that archive search spans cloud + legacy stores and runs periodically; maintain a short “search log” for each case.

• Reconsideration playbook: One-page internal guide covering: when to apply; what to attach; how to frame influence on outcome; and how to handle costs exposure if credibility shifts.

  
  

Final word

For education HR, this decision is not about “gotcha” tactics, it’s about process integrity. Clear conditional-offer wording, disciplined disclosure, and robust search capability protect your Trust twice over: in safeguarding recruitment standards and in litigation resilience when details are scrutinised months (or years) later. The EAT’s message is simple: when fresh evidence undermines a global credibility finding, everything can be reset so make sure your documentary trail is complete, searchable, and cautious in tone from day one.