Mrs S Cullen v Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service — 2020

Mrs S Cullen, a helpline adviser at ACAS, brought disability discrimination and victimisation claims arising from the way her performance in call handling was managed. ACAS accepted that she was disabled by reason of dyslexia. The claimant’s reasonable adjustments case was based on the requirement that Newcastle hub advisers meet targets for call structure and call scoring. The tribunal accepted that this was a PCP applied to the claimant, but found that it did not put her at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled colleagues. It accepted that dyslexia can affect people differently and referred to the claimant’s earlier psychological assessment, but held on the evidence that her difficulties at work were not shown to stem from an inability to follow the call structure because of dyslexia, and were not shown to make her more likely to fail calls for the reasons identified by management.