Mr A Carr v Network Rail Infrastructure Limited — 2022

The claimant, who was accepted to be disabled, applied internally for a grade 3 signaller role. The respondent agreed adjustments for the interview, including longer interview time and advance provision of the main questions. He was not given the prompt or probe questions in advance, and he was unsuccessful after scoring 29 while the other two candidates scored 46.

The tribunal dismissed the direct disability discrimination complaints. It accepted that the claimant received a lower score, was rejected, and was discouraged from applying for future signaller roles, but found that the scoring and feedback arose from the answers he gave in interview, including answers that caused safety concerns, rather than because of the fact of his disabilities.

The tribunal also dismissed the s.15 claim. It found the treatment was unfavourable, but was not satisfied that perceptions about the claimant's ability to do the role arose from his disabilities rather than from his interview performance. It added that, if the treatment had arisen from a justified perception that the claimant could not perform the safety critical role, ensuring health and safety would have been a legitimate aim and the treatment would have been justified on the issues before it.

The indirect discrimination claim failed because the tribunal did not find that the respondent applied a PCP of not making reasonable adjustments to safety critical roles. The reasonable adjustments claims also failed: some alleged PCPs were not established, a prior occupational health assessment was not itself a reasonable adjustment in law, and the tribunal was not persuaded that asking prompt questions in interview rather than providing them in advance put the claimant at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled candidates. No remedy was considered because none of the complaints succeeded.