Mrs Joanne Page v Howarth Timber and Building Supplies Limited — 2023

Mrs Joanne Page worked for Howarth Timber and Building Supplies Limited at the Ashton-under-Lyne branch from 23 October 1993 until her dismissal on 27 April 2022. The tribunal found that she was disabled for Equality Act purposes from 28 June 2021, when she was suffering from a mental impairment with a substantial and long-term effect on day-to-day activities. It also found that her mental health had already been in decline before the pub incident on 26 June 2021, and that her GP records described work-related stress rather than the incident as the trigger for her symptoms.

The claimant went off work after the incident and remained absent on long-term sick leave. The respondent held keeping-in-touch meetings, referred her to occupational health, and offered a number of measures intended to support a return to work, including EAP counselling, informal visits to the branch, a temporary move to another branch, moving her desk near a lockable room, and arrangements to deal with any confrontation if DB or his sister came into the branch. The tribunal accepted that the claimant had a genuine fear of meeting DB or MB, but found that the incident itself had been an argument without violence or threats and that the respondent had a workable plan if the customers attended the branch.

The tribunal dismissed the discrimination arising from disability claim, the direct discrimination claim, and the reasonable adjustments claim. It found that the dismissal was not because of disability in the section 15 sense, but because the claimant had been absent for around 10 months with no indication of when, or whether, she could return. It accepted the respondent's stated aims of maintaining reliable attendance, managing long-term capability absence, and planning its workforce, and held that dismissal was a proportionate response. On direct discrimination, the tribunal rejected each of the claimant's pleaded complaints, including the complaints about counselling time, written warnings, non-customer-facing work, home working, other vacancies, access to the branch out of hours, risk assessment, swipe-card access, banning DB and MB, and asking DB to use another branch.

On reasonable adjustments, the tribunal identified the claimant's first PCP as a requirement to deal with customers with whom she had previously had an altercation, but found there was no PCP requiring her to deal with DB or his relatives in practice and that the respondent had already offered practical measures to reduce any disadvantage. It held that home working was not a reasonable adjustment for the ABM role, that the proposed swipe-card system would not have provided protection, and that banning DB and MB or directing DB to another branch was not reasonable. The tribunal also rejected the second alleged PCP, namely a requirement that an absent ABM return to work, holding that this was not a PCP at all. All claims were dismissed and no monetary award was made.