Mrs L Hancock v Warrington and Halton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust — 2018

Mrs L Hancock was employed as an accuracy checking pharmacy technician from 15 December 1997 until her resignation took effect on 31 August 2016. The tribunal accepted that she had fibromyalgia and degenerative disc disease, that her role had already been adjusted to remove ward work and reduce her week to three days, and that some claims were withdrawn at the outset, including victimisation, direct disability discrimination, and a separate harassment/disability-arising bundle linked to the Dignity at Work appeal issue.

On complaint 1, the tribunal held that the requirement for ACPTs from Warrington Hospital to rotate to Halton General Hospital was indirect disability discrimination because it put disabled staff, and the claimant in particular, at a travel-related disadvantage and was not proportionate once the claimant's transport difficulties were known. The separate reasonable-adjustments claim over the same rota failed because the tribunal found that, after the first deployment, she was not in practice subjected to the rota again and so no substantial disadvantage requiring an operative adjustment was established on that claim.

The tribunal upheld harassment claims arising from the Occupational Health referral about ill-health retirement, the negative focus of the November and December 2015 meetings and correspondence, and the comments about Lorenzo and her future role. It also upheld harassment in relation to the sick-note request, the January and March 2016 attendance-management stages, the grievance handling, and the delays in progressing her complaints. By contrast, a number of allegations were rejected where the tribunal found that the respondent was genuinely acting on Occupational Health advice or on patient-safety concerns, such as the reports of drowsiness to Occupational Health, the suspension from safety-critical duties, the allocation of administrative work on her return, the reference to the Pharmacist Code, and the refusal to disclose patient-sensitive material.

The tribunal found discrimination arising from disability on several of the same episodes, including the stage 3 and stage 4 attendance-management steps, the complaint that she was not moving matters forward, the grievance-policy decision, the withholding of information about the allegations, and the grievance-delay complaint. It dismissed the discrimination-arising claims where it accepted that the respondent was only informing the claimant of its concerns, protecting patient safety, or acting for confidentiality reasons, including the drowsiness referral, the suspension decision, the return-to-work administrative tasks, the code reference, and the error-report disclosure point.

On constructive unfair dismissal, the tribunal held that the claimant resigned in response to a cumulative breach of the implied term of trust and confidence. It found that the rota dispute, the handling of Occupational Health advice, the sickness-and-capability process, the grievance delay, and the lack of meaningful progress by May and June 2016 together undermined the relationship; the events of 3 May 2016 were identified as the final straw. The claim succeeded, but the supplied text does not set out any monetary award or remedy figures.