Case 3311129/2022 · Employment Tribunal

Miss A Brown v The Secretary of State for Justice — 2025

Case reference: 3311129/2022
Decision date: 22 September 2025
Jurisdiction: England & Wales
Judge: Employment Judge Graham
Venue: Bury St Edmunds
Panel members: Mr B McSweeney, Mrs C Smith

Indexed: 17 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Miss A Brown

Respondent

The Secretary of State for Justice

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

The Claimant was accepted to be disabled by reason of anxiety/depression, pernicious anaemia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and the Respondent conceded knowledge of disability at the material times. The constructive dismissal complaint was withdrawn after the Claimant confirmed that she had not been dismissed.

The tribunal dismissed the reasonable adjustments complaints about the physical features of the working environment and working from prison premises. It upheld the reasonable adjustments complaint about sickness absence trigger points, finding that the attendance management policy put the Claimant at a substantial disadvantage and that adjusting the trigger period, including by doubling it to 16 days, was a reasonable step.

The tribunal also upheld the discrimination arising from disability complaint. It found that the stage 1 unsatisfactory attendance warning was unfavourable treatment because of sickness absence arising in consequence of disability, and that issuing the warning was not a proportionate means of achieving the Respondent's legitimate aims.

Claims and outcomes

4 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Constructive dismissal	The Claimant confirmed during evidence that she had not been dismissed and was no longer pursuing constructive unfair dismissal; the complaint was dismissed upon withdrawal.	Withdrawn	—	—
Disability discrimination	Failure to make reasonable adjustments succeeded in relation to the sickness absence trigger points under the attendance management policy; the tribunal found that doubling the trigger period to 16 days would have had a real prospect of removing the disadvantage and was reasonable.	Upheld	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	Failure to make reasonable adjustments complaints concerning the physical features of the working environment and the requirement to work from prison premises were dismissed.	Dismissed	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	The section 15 Equality Act 2010 claim succeeded in relation to the unsatisfactory attendance warning issued on 25 April 2022.	Upheld	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

10 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How we got this data

Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.

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