An issue over housing ended with the officer being outed to his team (Picture: Getty Images)
A gay Royal Navy officer has won a £47,000 payout after a dispute over housing ended with him being outed to his team.
The anonymous serviceman had to come out to his senior officers, only for an email saying he’s gay to be circulated across the team.
The Nazy, he told a Bristol employment tribunal, breached the Equality Act by offering single men only one housing type while married couples had two.
After being assigned to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) site at Abbey Wood, the officer applied for accommodation near Bristol in July 2017.
But the place he was offered ‘failed to take proper account of his circumstances’, the court heard, so he took it up with his careers officer.
The panel heard he was told: ‘It shows you can suffer, so you have potential for leadership.’
The Royal Navy argued its housing policy was done to cut costs (Picture: Crown Copyright)
Left with no other choice, XA had to make the ‘difficult’ decision to come out to his bosses when he had no plans to.
But he was outed to the rest of the team when an email flagging the accommodation issue was circulated to other offices.
This caused XA a ‘sleepless night’ as he felt ‘deeply anxious’.
The serviceman told the hearing: ‘I have found the whole experience stressful, draining and a distraction from just being able to lead a normal life.
‘[It] makes me feel that somehow I am sub-human and not worthy of the consideration that others would receive.’
The MOD ‘failed to follow [its own] sound policies’ because of a ‘serious gap’ between the rules and ‘the level understanding’ from staff, the tribunal said.
The way officials just ‘casually circulated’ the officer’s sexuality amounted to ‘repeated breaches of confidentiality.
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XA, described as a ‘high-flyer with an impressive range of skills and qualities’ who displayed ‘consistently high performance’, was awarded £46,959.
The Royal Navy argued that its move to change its housing policy in 2016 was done to cut costs, but employment Judge Martha Street saw otherwise.
The tribunal found that the policy would have ‘a disproportionate effect on the group of Service Personnel who identify as gay’ as members of the LGBT+ community are ‘less likely to be married or in a civil partnership than heterosexual service personnel’.
She ordered the MOD to take steps to ‘comply’ with its own diversity and inclusion policies rather than treating them as little-understood a ‘tick box’.
‘LGB service personnel were disproportionately affected by the loss of choice of substitute service accommodation imposed on those entitled to single substitute service accommodation and were disadvantaged by the lack of choice,’ she said.
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‘I have found the whole experience stressful, draining and a distraction from just being able to lead a normal life.’