Connor Wright successfully represented the Respondent in a 6-day Employment Tribunal hearing concerning Reasonable Adjustments under the Equality Act 2010.
Background
The Claimant was a job applicant in the Respondent’s recruitment process. The Claimant suffered from a number of disabilities, on which he relied, including dyslexia and autism. The Claimant applied to the Respondent shortly before the deadline, and was later permitted to submit a more comprehensive application form, after ACAS were engaged. The Claimant asserted that the Respondent then failed to make reasonable adjustments by failing to make a telephone call to the Claimant to discuss his application form, before deciding whether to progress his application to the next stage of the selection process.
Failure to make Reasonable Adjustments
The Tribunal’s decision ultimately turned on whether the Claimant, when completing the Respondent’s written application form, suffered a substantial disadvantage compared to someone without his disability.
The Tribunal considered a range of evidence with respect to the impact of the Claimant’s disabilities. This included medical evidence, written documents produced by the Claimant, previous Tribunal decisions, and the Claimant’s oral evidence. The Tribunal concluded at [49] that:
Considering the evidence in the round, the claimant’s own direct evidence does not support that he has difficulties with written communication skills. His oral evidence and assertion within the application form is that he was excellent written communication skills. The claimant’s specific medical evidence is not supportive of him having difficulties with written communication skills… The general objective evidence does not support the contented substantial disadvantage and neither do our observations of the claimant’s pleadings and how he has conducted litigation.
Accordingly, the Claimant’s complaint was unanimously dismissed.
A copy of the Tribunal’s judgment can be found here >>> .
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This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the view of any other member of St Philips Chambers.
