Miss E Sneddon v Represented by: Mr W Templeton Consultant East Dunbartonshire Council — 2019

This was a preliminary hearing before Employment Judge Shona Maclean on Miss E Sneddon's application to amend her claim against East Dunbartonshire Council. The original ET1 had ticked disability discrimination and referred to Cushing's Syndrome affecting mobility, a return to work on 13 March 2017 after long-term sick absence, and an allegation that the respondent had failed to make reasonable adjustments. The respondent objected that the proposed amendment went further and sought to add indirect discrimination, clinical depression as a further disability, and several new factual matters.

The tribunal held that it had discretion under rule 29, to be exercised in line with the overriding objective and the guidance in Selkent Bus Company Limited v Muir. It accepted that the claimant's later document was, in effect, an amendment application. In assessing the proposed changes, the tribunal distinguished between material that expanded on the original claim and material that introduced new facts and a new cause of action. It found that indirect discrimination was not foreshadowed in the ET1 and would involve different lines of enquiry, and it noted that time bar was an issue for that proposed claim.

The tribunal allowed the amendment only in a limited form. It permitted the additional material to stand as adding to, rather than replacing, the existing particulars of claim in section 8.2 of the ET1, but ordered deletion of paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 and the sentence in paragraph 11 referring to clinical depression and the claimant being placed under unneeded stress. No final decision was made on the substantive discrimination allegations or any remedy at this stage.