Mr M Ferries v West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority — 2021

Mr M Ferries, a Watch Commander at the Respondent's Hunslet Fire Station, brought a disability discrimination claim arising from the Respondent's Station Manager selection process in March to May 2020. At the hearing the Respondent accepted that he was disabled within section 6 EqA, by reason of mixed anxiety and depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that it knew of that disability. The case was confined to an allegation that the Respondent failed to make reasonable adjustments in relation to three practices affecting the command assessment stage of the process.

On the first allegation, the tribunal accepted that requiring the Claimant to undertake the command assessment at limited notice put him at a substantial disadvantage because his anxiety meant the short notice was more stressful for him than for non-disabled candidates. The tribunal also found that the Respondent knew, or ought reasonably to have known, of that disadvantage. However, it held that there was no reasonable step the Respondent could have taken to avoid it: even postponing the assessment to the latest available Friday would still have left the Claimant facing an assessment at limited notice, and the tribunal found that the extra days would not have materially helped his preparation.

On the second allegation, the tribunal accepted that the Respondent did not carry out an equality impact assessment when it changed the date of the command assessment, and that this had the potential to disadvantage the Claimant because it did not consciously consider whether additional adjustments were needed. It found, however, that the omission did not in fact place him at a substantial disadvantage, because an equality impact assessment would not have identified any step that could have avoided the short-notice anxiety caused by the revised timetable. On the third allegation, the tribunal found that holding the command assessment without the pre-assessment training originally envisaged did place the Claimant at a substantial disadvantage, and that the Respondent knew this from the Reasonable Adjustment Plan. It nevertheless held that no reasonable adjustment was available, because the third-party provider was unavailable and the Respondent's own policy was that its training team would not assist candidates once the recruitment process had opened.

The tribunal therefore concluded that all surviving allegations failed and were dismissed. It also refused the Respondent's application for a costs order.