Mr A v Home Office — 2020

The hearing was arranged to determine the claimant's application to amend his claim to include a complaint that the respondent had failed to make reasonable adjustments. The claimant had ticked disability discrimination on the claim form, but the tribunal found that the form and factual narrative concerned an injury at work and payment of injury benefit, and contained no reference to a reasonable adjustments complaint or facts supporting one.

Applying the amendment authorities, the tribunal concluded that the proposed amendment would introduce a new cause of action. The alleged events occurred between 15 September 2017 and 17 October 2017, and the application was first raised at a preliminary hearing on 23 January 2019, which the tribunal treated as 15 months late. The tribunal accepted that the alleged incident was a one-off act and decided it would not be just and equitable to extend time.

The tribunal took account of the claimant's explanation that he thought the claim form only needed the bare bones of the case, his status as an unrepresented party, his mental health difficulties, and the prejudice to him of losing the opportunity to pursue that complaint. It balanced those matters against the lack of any pleaded basis for the complaint, the claimant's previous experience of tribunal claims, the likely reliance on memories of events three years earlier, and the respondent's need to defend a claim not in the claim form. The amendment application was refused, and the remaining unauthorised deduction from wages claim was left to proceed to a hearing.