Miss H Mokhtar Benounane v LRG Employees Limited — 2025

The respondent conceded that the claimant was disabled during the material period by cancer and anxiety and depression. The tribunal also found that she had dyslexia, which met the section 6 Equality Act 2010 definition of disability, but it did not find that EUPD had a substantial adverse effect at the relevant time. The claimant worked as a Property Manager from 29 August 2023 until her dismissal in December 2023, on probation, and the case turned on criticisms about lateness, concentration, workload, training, phone handling, property complaints, and the steps taken by management after concerns escalated in November 2023.

The direct disability discrimination claim failed because the tribunal did not accept that the material treatment was because of disability. It found that the training provided was adequate, that the lateness and concentration criticisms were management responses that would have been made to any probationer in the same position, that the claimant had not shown she was given a heavier workload than colleagues, and that criticism of her note-taking was a justified management concern. Several allegations were also rejected as factual matters, including the alleged refusal to allow home working, the alleged mask and corner remarks, and the alleged instruction that she was to be "put in a corner like a baby".

The tribunal found that the claimant was placed on a PIP and later dismissed because of the accumulation of complaints about her work and the respondent’s concerns about her performance, rather than because of disability. It found that the respondent knew of the claimant’s cancer from the outset and later learned of anxiety and depression on 29 November 2023, but that there was no sufficient link between those disabilities and the treatment complained of. On the section 15 claim, the tribunal accepted that the claimant’s concentration issues and difficulty with noisy phones arose in consequence of disability, and that the PIP and dismissal were unfavourable treatment, but held that the operative reason for those steps was the property complaints and performance concerns, not the consequences of disability.

The reasonable adjustments claim also failed. The tribunal found that the respondent operated a PCP requiring phones to be answered immediately, and that this put the claimant at a substantial disadvantage after 29 November 2023 in relation to anxiety and depression. However, it held that the respondent did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to know that she was likely to be placed at that disadvantage, and that the adjustments proposed by the claimant were not reasonable in the circumstances. The direct race discrimination claim failed for similar evidential reasons: the tribunal found no less favourable treatment because she was not White British, and accepted the respondent’s explanations for the decisions complained of.