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A black personal assistant (PA) "lost touch with reality" when she sued Marks and Spencer for race discrimination over a reorganisation plan named 'Project Coffee', a tribunal has ruled. Claudia Royer claimed that the code name was a "racist trope" referring to plans to hire other PAs from diverse backgrounds. But the London Central Employment Tribunal threw out her "wild" case after finding that the name had been allocated to a company-wide restructuring, suggesting that her claims lacked "common sense".

The tribunal heard that Miss Royer, who had worked as a personal assistant for the high street chain for nine years, raised a complaint over an alleged initiative to recruit PAs from diverse backgrounds after she was made redundant in 2023. She claimed that the initiative's secret code name, 'Project Coffee', amounted to a "racist trope", but M&S insisted that the wider company reorganisation launched under the moniker in 2019 "had nothing to do" with the specific recruitment of "racially representative" PAs.

"At around the same time [as the reorganisation], several newly-appointed PAs, at least one of whom was black, were appointed and [Miss Royer] was asked to greet them when they arrived at [M&S's] premises," the tribunal was told.

Miss Royer was made redundant as part of a reorganisation of PAs in the firm's Foods group in October 2023, and wrote a letter of complaint to its CEO in the same month, which was treated as a formal grievance.

M&S manager Rachel Lowe found that Miss Royer was "quite mistaken" in in her perception of the nature and purpose of 'Project Coffee' and an appeal against the dismissal of her grievance was also unsuccessful.

M&S also bought a document relating to the reorganisation process which had the words 'Project Coffee' at the top to the legal proceedings, which Miss Royer attempted to dismiss as "manufactured".

The tribunal found that her position on 'Project Coffee' was one "which seemed to lose touch with reality and common sense".

Employment judge Anthony Snelson said: "Unfortunately, [Miss Royer] has become unshakeably conviced by her surprising theory that there was a secret programme called 'Project Coffee' designed to make the cohort of PAs more racially representative of the world outside the organisation.

"If she was right, it would be difficult to see how its existence would constitute a detriment to her, save perhaps in so far as its name might give offence.

"But, in any event, we are quite satisfied that there was no such programme. That Miss Royer should pursue the matter even after being shown a document which clearly evidences the fact that Project Coffee refers to a proposal for a structural reorganisation, resorting to the wild allegation that the document was manufactured, reflects poorly on her judgement.

"Nor was there any detriment in asking her to welcome new colleagues to the organisation. That was a task which fell naturally within her remit and there could be no objection to being asked to perform it."

The tribunal found that Miss Royer was sacked because her role had become redundant. All her employment tribunal claims, including a claim for unfair dismissal, failed.