: L Brown A Matheson Valerie Findlay v NHS Education Scotland and 1 other — 2022

The claimant applied on 9 November 2019 for a place on the Public Health Specialty Training Scheme. At the Assessment Centre on 10 January 2020 she scored 62 in RANRA, 61 in W-GCTAUK and 37 in the Situational Judgement Test, against minimum standards of 45, 47 and 46 respectively, so she did not progress to the Selection Centre. She said she failed the SJT because she had a panic attack arising in consequence of her generalised anxiety disorder, which the respondents knew about.

The tribunal found, on the balance of probabilities, that the claimant did not have a panic attack in the SJT arising from her disability that caused her to fail the test. It regarded her evidence as a general account of panic attacks rather than a reliable recollection of what happened on 10 January 2020. The tribunal placed weight on the fact that she did not raise any problem on the day or within seven days, despite the instructions given and the availability of a later mop-up event; when she was told on 28 January 2020 that she had not progressed, and in her early correspondence afterwards, she referred to disability and earlier scores but not to a panic attack. There was also no medical evidence of a panic attack, and the tribunal rejected year-on-year comparisons of SJT scores as meaningful because the test content and the applicant cohort changed each year.

In the alternative, the tribunal held that if the claimant had shown treatment arising in consequence of disability, the respondents would have been justified under section 15 Equality Act 2010. The legitimate aim was to select applicants who were competent in the core skills at the relevant time and who were the best and most suitable candidates in that year's cohort for an important, demanding and costly training scheme. Requiring applicants to pass each Assessment Centre test, and not transposing scores from a previous recruitment round, was found to be a proportionate means of achieving that aim because cross-year score comparison would not be accurate and would distort the rankings. The complaint was therefore dismissed and no remedy was awarded.