Ms J Watson (Representative) For the v Respondent — 2018

The claimant, a teacher at Alderman Davies Church in Wales Primary School, brought three tribunal claims. The tribunal found he had suffered a serious head injury in 1986 and had intermittent psychiatric and cognitive difficulties, but it was not able to say he was disabled before 2015; it found he was disabled by 23 March 2015 at the latest and that the school had constructive knowledge from then.

The tribunal accepted that the claimant told the headteacher about his accident and difficulties on a 2013 Pendine trip, and it described a marked change in his behaviour in early 2015 when class management problems, stress-related absence in February 2015, and the 23 and 24 March 2015 events led to suspension under child-protection procedures. It then traced the refusal to disclose full allegation details, the PASM process, the later return to work on limited duties in July 2015, the grievance and the ICT/data-protection investigation, and the claimant's resignation on 16 June 2016.

The constructive unfair dismissal claim failed. The tribunal held that the refusal to let Mrs Sydenham contact the claimant before the data-protection investigation was completed was an innocuous step rather than a breach of the implied term of trust and confidence, so the claimant was not constructively dismissed.

Most of the claim 1 disability discrimination and harassment allegations were rejected. The tribunal held that several ss20/21 reasonable-adjustment complaints were out of time, even though it considered that some of them would otherwise have been reasonable adjustments on the merits, and it rejected the remaining s15 complaints about confidentiality, delay, limited duties, investigation steps, altered charges and use of grievance material, as well as the s26 harassment allegations.

In the later ICT/data-protection claim, the tribunal held that the claimant's decision-making when he downloaded over 200 documents was affected by his disability, and paragraph 97.3 says that dismissing him for that matter was unfavourable treatment arising in consequence of disability and was not justified. It also found victimisation in the handling of the ICT disciplinary process and the appeal stage, including the role of an ad hoc governors' committee, the involvement of the respondent's solicitor, and the appeal panel's apparent concern with the claimant's tribunal proceedings. A remedy hearing was to follow, and the judgment text is internally inconsistent because the opening dispositive paragraph says the s15 claims were dismissed while paragraph 97.3 later says the ICT dismissal was s15 discrimination.