Lorraine Gordon v Student Loans Company Ltd — 2020

Lorraine Gordon was employed by Student Loans Company Limited as a Customer Service Adviser from 2008 and was accepted to be disabled by reason of physical impairments, chronic pain syndrome, anxiety and depression. The tribunal found she had received support at work, including adjusted attendance targets, micro-breaks and informal performance coaching. The dispute centred on a call on 13 December 2019, after which she was suspended and later dismissed for gross misconduct.

The tribunal upheld the unfair dismissal complaint. It found that the disciplinary process was unfair because allegation 2 was not clearly defined: the investigator, dismissing manager and appeal manager understood the alleged instruction differently, and the claimant was not told with clarity what instruction she was said to have unreasonably refused. The tribunal also held that it was unreasonable for the employer to decide the case without obtaining an updated occupational health report, despite the claimant’s case that pain and medication may have affected her conduct. The decision-makers relied on matters beyond the precise allegations that had been put, and dismissal was outside the band of reasonable responses.

The section 15 disability discrimination claim failed. Although the tribunal accepted that the claimant was in pain on 13 December 2019, it was not satisfied that her conduct on the call, or the employer’s perception of resistance to feedback, was sufficiently connected to her disability for the purposes of section 15 Equality Act 2010. It found that the claimant’s rudeness and condescension were more likely explained by a combination of factors, including her frustrations with the caller and her own views about the respondent’s handling of her PTML application.

The reasonable adjustments claim also failed. For the attendance-management PCP, the tribunal found the respondent had already made practical adjustments by delaying formal attendance action on several occasions and resetting the monitoring period. For the performance-management PCP, the tribunal found the alleged 'informal intense performance plan' was not the actual practice applied, and in any event the claimant had not established the asserted disadvantage or the respondent’s knowledge of it. On remedy, the tribunal found contributory conduct and said any basic and compensatory awards should be reduced by 40%, but no final monetary figure was quantified in this judgment and the parties were asked to say whether a remedy hearing was needed.