Claimant v Met Office for and on Behalf of the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy — 2021

F had complex PTSD which the Met Office knew about and had accommodated during the academic stage of training. The tribunal found that, at the end of practical training, F narrowly failed the AMF assessment on 12 March 2020, with three competencies still outstanding, but that the assessor's notes pointed towards further training and development rather than incapability.

The tribunal found that F did not refuse to retake the AMF. F wanted to redo only the outstanding points, and the evidence did not show that anyone had formally required a full resit before the dismissal process advanced. It found that human resources, rather than the panel members themselves, substantially directed the process, and that the usual probation steps were skipped when the matter was moved straight to a hearing in April 2020.

The tribunal also found that redeployment was not properly considered, despite the probation policy referring to it and despite comparators who had been assisted to seek other roles. It accepted that the legitimate aim of ensuring competent meteorologists was real, but held that the steps taken were not a proportionate means of achieving that aim. The tribunal concluded that the dismissal was because of disability, and that the employer's response to F's reluctance to repeat the assessment was linked to the effect of the disability.

On the pleaded disability heads, the tribunal said F had been denied the opportunity to resit the AMF, that the confidence point was not the real issue, and that it would have been a reasonable adjustment to allow a resit rather than dismissing F. It recorded no monetary remedy in this liability judgment, and the final order was anonymisation of the claimant's identity.