Ms J May, Solicitor. For the v Respondent — 2020

The claimant, a security guard, brought disability and sex discrimination claims. This hearing determined a preliminary issue only: whether she was a disabled person for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 during the agreed material period of 1 March to 12 September 2019. The tribunal applied the section 6 definition of disability and the Schedule 1 provisions on long-term and treatment-related effects, and referred to the Goodwin questions in setting out the legal framework.

The tribunal reviewed medical material from 2017 onward, including an A&E referral after suicidal thoughts, a mental health assessment describing the claimant as vulnerable and immature, later notes describing her as emotionally immature and vulnerable to abuse, and a GP letter and social work letter referring to PTSD symptoms, nightmares, flashbacks, uneven development, and regression into a child-like state. The judge accepted the claimant's explanation for gaps in her GP records and did not treat the missing material as undermining the issue to be decided.

The judge rejected the respondent's attempt to separate PTSD from delayed emotional development, finding that there was no analysis in the documents which required those labels to be treated separately. The tribunal accepted that the claimant had experienced the impairments described in her impact statement, and that they had a significant effect on her ability to carry out day-to-day activities from at least 2017. It also left out later PIP reports dated 30 September and 31 December 2019 because they post-dated the relevant period. The tribunal therefore found that the claimant was a disabled person at the material time by reason of PTSD, anxiety, depression and delayed emotional development. No liability finding on the underlying discrimination complaints, and no remedy award, was made in this judgment.