
Miriam O’Reilly, the 53-year-old presenter of Countryfile, won the employment tribunal against the BBC claiming she had been unfairly dropped from the rural affairs show when it moved to a primetime Sunday evening slot in April 2009.
The case began when O’Reilly was dropped along with Charlotte Smith, 46, Juliet Morris, 45, and Michaela Strachan, 44, to make way for younger presenters such as Julia Bradbury, 40, and Katie Knapman, 38. Martin Edwards, head of employment law at Mace & Jones, says the case is a stark warning that employers must tread carefully with equality legislation.“The BBC made a number of very costly errors in this case,” he says. “The tribunal has branded this large and prestigious organisation, which no doubt claims to be an equal-opportunities employer, as ‘complacent’. The case highlights the high risks in the area of age discrimination and shows how assumptions about, and stereotyping of, older people are damaging and dangerous.”
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