Mr Brady, Counsel For the v Respondent — 2023

At an open preliminary hearing on 2 May 2023, Employment Judge K J Palmer considered only whether Sarah Brown was a disabled person for the purposes of s.6 Equality Act 2010 at the material time between February 2022 and June 2022. The respondent accepted that she had psoriatic arthritis but did not accept that the statutory definition was met. The strike-out application mentioned in the case listing was not pursued at the hearing.

The tribunal accepted the claimant's evidence about the effects of the impairment, including flare-ups in her spine and day-to-day difficulties with cooking, cleaning, lifting, shopping, gripping objects, writing, weeding, using a lawn mower, and concentration. It found that those effects, considered in the round and on the basis of the evidence before it, were more than minor or trivial and long term, and that the effects without medication would be greater.

The tribunal did not accept that the effects of shielding due to Covid-19 established disability on this evidence, because the shielding guidance was advisory and had been lifted, and there was insufficient evidence that the effect continued in this claimant's case. It nevertheless held that the claimant was a disabled person under s.6 Equality Act 2010 at the material time. No substantive determination of the constructive unfair dismissal or disability discrimination claims, and no remedy, was made in this judgment.