Ms A Palmer, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2017

The claimant, whom the respondents accepted had Tourette's syndrome and Autistic Spectrum Disorder/Asperger's, brought disability discrimination claims arising from recruitment, his work in Treasury Back Office, and the later redundancy proposal. The tribunal found that the respondents were fixed with the occupational health provider's knowledge of Tourette's from the recruitment process, or at least should have made further enquiries very early on, and that by 6 September 2016 they were aware or should have been aware of Asperger's. The tribunal also found that the claimant's disabilities affected the way he needed to be managed: he needed structure, clear instruction, gradual build-up of duties, and support to reduce stress.

The claims about the delayed start date failed. The tribunal held that the respondents' requirement for pre-employment health screening applied to non-operational staff generally, had the legitimate aim of checking fitness for work and identifying adjustments, and was proportionate. The delay caused by the change of occupational health provider and the need for further assessment was not disproportionate, so neither direct discrimination nor discrimination arising from disability in relation to the delayed start date was upheld.

The tribunal upheld the section 15 EqA claim in relation to the 11 April 2017 redundancy risk decision. It found that the claimant was placed at risk because of the level of management support he required and because he was not yet able to do all parts of the role, and that those matters arose from his disabilities and the stress they caused. By contrast, the direct discrimination case over the same redundancy step was dismissed, and the victimisation complaint also failed because the tribunal found the decision was not made because of the claimant's grievances.

Most of the harassment allegations were rejected. The tribunal did not accept that the references to disciplinary sanctions in early 2016 were disability-related harassment. It found the May 2016 comments about pay and supervision were prompted by the period-end discussion rather than disability, and it did not accept that AA said the claimant's last day was 15 May 2017. The 23 March 2017 meeting at which voluntary severance and redundancy options were put was treated as unwanted conduct, but the harassment claim was not upheld.

The reasonable-adjustments case partly succeeded. The tribunal accepted that the respondents should have given the claimant a reduced workload earlier, broken his work into chunks, set clear specific targets, provided a weekly plan, moved his desk away from the middle of the team, and arranged a buddy; it also accepted that he should not have been required to manage too many tasks at once. It rejected some alleged PCPs, including lack of structure, lack of a working PC, lack of leadership and lack of skills within the team, and it did not accept that it was a reasonable adjustment to exclude all last-minute tasks because urgent work was unavoidable. The stress risk assessment point was withdrawn. No remedy was fixed in this judgment because the tribunal listed remedy for a later private hearing.