Ms M Bari v Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis — 2020

The claimant, who was employed as a Communications Officer and had been diagnosed with MS, brought claims of disability discrimination and unlawful deduction from wages. The respondent accepted that she was disabled for the purposes of s.6 Equality Act 2010. The tribunal considered a series of incidents between December 2015 and June 2016 concerning occupational health recommendations, working patterns, sickness absence, management communications and pay consequences.

The tribunal upheld parts of the disability discrimination complaints. It found that some comments and actions connected with the claimant's inability to work night shifts, her weekend working, the occupational health referral mentioning redeployment, comments about the effect of her adjusted working pattern on the team, the informal management action letter, and the request that she produce a rota or business plan amounted to unlawful treatment under the Equality Act 2010. It also found that the respondent failed to make a reasonable adjustment when issuing the informal management action letter, where the reasonable adjustment would have been not to issue it or to discuss attendance concerns without issuing it.

Other allegations were dismissed, including the complaint about cancelling a chair order, the allegation about a comment that it was good the claimant had lost vision in one eye, rota errors which the tribunal accepted were clerical errors, and all victimisation allegations. The tribunal found that the decision to prevent the claimant working the weekend of 20-21 February 2016 caused loss of the shift premium and amounted to an unlawful deduction from wages, with the amount left to be addressed at a remedy hearing.