Member L Grime Tribunal Member A Smith Mrs Karen Quin v Represented by: Mr M Quin Husband Falkirk Council — 2023

Mrs Karen Quin worked for Falkirk Council from 1989 and was found to be disabled for Equality Act purposes, with anxiety and depression and a hearing impairment. The tribunal found the respondent knew of the hearing impairment by January 2020. After the Covid-19 restrictions began, hybrid working was introduced from around June 2020. The tribunal found that a Covid-19 risk assessment was prepared on 31 August 2020 without consulting the claimant, and that after an audiology appointment around 1 September 2020 the claimant told Ms Allyson McKinnon about difficulties with hybrid working, hearing loss and hearing aids. Ms McKinnon then removed audio-typing duties in September 2020 and telephone-answering duties in October 2020. The claimant went off sick on 7 December 2020 and did not return to work before her dismissal for capability reasons in June 2022.

The tribunal held that the discrimination complaints were out of time. It rejected the argument that the treatment amounted to conduct extending over a period, finding that the decisions to remove duties were taken in September and October 2020 and were not re-triggered after the claimant went off work on 7 December 2020. It then refused to extend time on the just and equitable basis. The tribunal found that the delay in bringing the claim was not sufficiently explained, that Mr Quin had referred to Equality Act breaches in November 2021, and that the death of Ms McKinnon created material evidential prejudice because she could not give evidence.

On the merits, the section 15 claim failed because the tribunal did not treat the omission of a risk assessment, the removal of duties, or the offer to work from the office as unfavourable treatment in the statutory sense, and it did not find the necessary causal link between any treatment and something arising in consequence of disability. It also stated that any relevant treatment would have been objectively justified. The reasonable adjustments claim failed because the pleaded risk-assessment point was not a PCP, the proposed arrangement of working alone in an office was not shown to be a reasonable adjustment on the evidence, and the loop-system argument failed because the respondent did not have the relevant knowledge and, in the period before 7 December 2020, providing such an aid was not a reasonable step. The tribunal therefore dismissed the claims and recorded that no issue of remedy arose.