In person For the v Respondent — 2017

Miss J Allard worked for the respondent as a non-emergency ambulance person from 2004 until she was dismissed on 12 December 2014 with pay in lieu of notice. The only claim before the tribunal was discrimination arising from disability under ss.15 and 39(2)(c) Equality Act 2010. The respondent accepted that she had been treated unfavourably and that the treatment arose in consequence of her disability, so the issue was whether dismissal was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

The tribunal found that the respondent's sickness absence and redeployment process did not follow its own policy in several respects. It found there had been no proper case conference, no referral back to occupational health to obtain a view on what work Miss Allard could do, no 8-week period to seek alternative employment as the policy envisaged, and no meaningful response to her enquiries about vacancies. It also rejected parts of the evidence from the respondent's witnesses about what Miss Allard had said about her skills, and found that she was capable of lighter office-based administrative work even though she could not return to her ambulance role.

The tribunal considered two vacancies that were identified during the relevant period. It found that Miss Allard did not meet the essential criteria for the Administrative/Clerical Assistant to the District Nurses post, but it did find that she could have done the Band 2 Administration Support role in the Safeguarding Children Team. In the tribunal's view, she met the essential criteria for that post apart from any possible maths and English qualification issue, and the respondent had not shown that it could insist on rejecting her for redeployment to that role.

On that basis, the tribunal held that dismissal was not proportionate because Miss Allard should have been redeployed rather than dismissed. It concluded that, if offered the Safeguarding Children Team post, she would have accepted it and would have been able to perform it satisfactorily. The tribunal therefore upheld the disability discrimination claim and directed that a remedy hearing be listed for 9 October 2017 in Cambridge, with schedules of loss to be exchanged beforehand.