Mr M Davies v Environtec Ltd — 2022

At a preliminary hearing on 12 April 2022, the tribunal decided whether Mr Davies was a disabled person for Equality Act 2010 purposes during the agreed relevant period from 14 September 2020 to 11 April 2021, the date of his resignation. The tribunal found that the respondent's face covering policy began on or around 14 September 2020 following Welsh Government rules, not in August 2020 as the claimant had suggested.

On asthma, the tribunal accepted that the claimant had chronic childhood asthma, but it rejected that he suffered from severe asthma. It relied on the 2017 health questionnaire, the limited use of preventative medication, and GP records showing routine prescription of a reliever inhaler. It found that the asthma did not have a substantial adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities, and that the evidence did not show a materially greater effect without treatment.

On anxiety, the tribunal accepted brief periods of anxiety in 2016 and a further episode in 2018, but found no sufficient evidence that those periods had a substantial effect lasting, or likely to last, 12 months. For the 2020 to 2021 period, it found that the claimant's symptoms were more likely a reaction to the workplace dispute, disciplinary process, and grievance arising after the February 2021 incident, rather than to face-covering requirements. It concluded that the anxiety, whether alone or in combination with asthma, did not amount to a disability because any effect on day-to-day activities was not shown to be substantial or long term. No remedy was determined in this judgment, which dealt only with the disability-status issue.