Ms S. Samuels v Respondent — 2024

The tribunal accepted that Ms Samuels was disabled by Ehlers Danlos syndrome and the atopic conditions relied on, but not by anxiety and depression until September 2022; it also held that recurrent abscesses were not a disability. UCL did not know of the physical disabilities until May 2022, when the claimant supplied her condition list and later amplified it, and the tribunal found there was no reason on the evidence why the respondent ought to have known earlier that depression was a disability requiring adjustment.

The section 15 and section 13 discrimination claims failed. The 40% office attendance requirement was a general return-to-office rule applied after lockdown restrictions were lifted, not treatment because of disability. On the specific complaint about cover for the claimant's work in March 2022, the tribunal held that the comparisons with Naz Siddique and Jane Paterson involved materially different circumstances and that the respondent's response was driven by workload, performance concerns and staffing pressures rather than disability.

The reasonable adjustments claim failed across the PCPs relied on. The tribunal found no substantial disadvantage from the office attendance rule, in-person meetings, the one-hour lunch break rule, the sickness and absence policy, the probation policy, rigid start and finish times, or the management of poor performance. Where health information was disclosed, UCL made adjustments such as allowing breaks, referring to occupational health, and routing tasks through Felicity Aktepe, and the tribunal found no failure to make reasonable adjustments.

The harassment claim was dismissed because the incidents relied on, including the 16 May email, the 27 April probation meeting, later task-management emails, and the discussions around Jamie Day's role, were either not reasonably capable of amounting to harassment or were not related to disability. The victimisation claim also failed: the grievance raised on 18 October 2022 was dealt with in the probation process, the tribunal found dismissal had already been signalled by 3 October 2022 before the grievance, and the later appeal was considered conscientiously and rejected on its merits.