Case 8000574/2023 · Employment Tribunal

A v The Scottish Ministers — 2025

Case reference: 8000574/2023
Decision date: 15 January 2025
Jurisdiction: Scotland
Judge: Employment Judge R Mackay

Indexed: 19 May 2026

Parties

2 named

Claimant

Respondent

The Scottish Ministers

Key findings

Tribunal's reasoning

This was a preliminary hearing on whether the claimant's disability discrimination claims were in time. The claimant relied on autism as his disability, which the respondent conceded for the purposes of the claim, with knowledge conceded from January 2024 only. The claimant had set out eight allegations, including section 15 Equality Act claims and section 20 reasonable adjustments claims.

The Tribunal found that Allegations 1 and 3 were in time, as the relevant alleged acts took place on 6 September 2023 and 1 August 2023. It also found that Allegation 2, insofar as brought under section 15, amounted to an alleged continuing state of affairs from July 2022 to December 2023 and was in time. The section 20 aspect of Allegation 2 was allowed to proceed, but with the respondent's time-bar argument reserved for the final hearing because limited evidence had been heard on the alleged adjustment and decision-making.

Allegations 4 to 8 concerned events from 2015 to 2021. The Tribunal found that these were distinct allegations separated by substantial periods of time and were not part of conduct extending over a period. It concluded that they were substantially out of time and that it was not just and equitable to extend time, taking account of the delay, the likely effect on the cogency of evidence, the claimant's reasons for delay, the respondent's cooperation with information requests, and relative prejudice.

Claims and outcomes

3 findings recorded

This case has mixed outcomes under at least one legal claim type. A tribunal can uphold some allegations and dismiss others under the same legal head, so rows below may represent separate issues or allegation groups from the judgment.

Claim type	Issue or finding	Outcome	Protected characteristic	Award
Disability discrimination	Preliminary hearing on time limits only. The section 15 Equality Act 2010 claims in Allegations 1, 2 and 3 were found to have been presented in time and may proceed to a final hearing; no merits determination was made.	Other	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	Preliminary hearing on time limits only. The section 20 Equality Act 2010 reasonable adjustments claim in Allegation 2 was permitted to proceed to a final hearing, with the respondent's time-bar argument reserved until all evidence has been heard; no merits determination was made.	Other	Disability	—
Disability discrimination	The disability discrimination claims in Allegations 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 were found to have been presented out of time and it was not just and equitable to allow them to proceed late.	Dismissed	Disability	—

Legal tests applied

14 references

Official outcome judgment PDF

Gov.uk primary record

The official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.

Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

How we got this data

Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.

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