United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellant	MISS N MALLICK (of Counsel) Instructed by: Bibi Gadwah Solicitors Second Floor 245-249 Whitechapel Road London E1 1DB


 


JUDGE A WAKEFIELD

1. This is an ex-parte preliminary hearing to determine whether the appeal of Miss J Riffin should proceed to a full hearing.
2. The Appellant had complained to an Employment Tribunal, sitting at Stratford in London, that she had been unfairly dismissed by the Respondent and that it had discriminated against her by reason of her disability.
3. The Employment Tribunal, in a long and careful Decision given on 16 October 2000 following a five day hearing the previous September, found firstly that the Appellant was fairly dismissed for a reason relating to her capability, having regard to her long term ill-health and secondly that she was not discriminated against by reason of her disability.
4. It is the second of these findings which is the subject of this appeal. It is the essence of the appeal that the Tribunal erred in law in finding that the Respondent either had, or would have when the Appellant returned to work, made adjustments to the conditions of work, such as to satisfy Section 6 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
5. The conclusions of the Employment Tribunal as to this are set out in paragraphs 32, 34 and 37 of their Decision. As relevant, those paragraphs are as follows:

"32 So far as reasonable adjustments are concerned, there were no reasonable adjustments which could be required of the Respondents that they had not already made. They had transferred the Applicant to an office nearer to her home, which did not involve her in long-distance travelling. She was only in that office for a period of two to three weeks before her absence in March 1998. She never returned to that office.

…….

34 The Tribunal have no doubt that, had the Applicant returned to work, any reasonable adjustment which could have been made with regard to VDU and/or telephone operation would have occurred. However the Applicant was simply unable to return due to her illness…….

37. …….The requirement to make all reasonable adjustments is for the purpose of maintaining an employee at work or to enable him or her to return. It is not, in our assessment, an adjustment that can be reasonably required of an employer that he should retain somebody in his employment for a longer period than it would be reasonable to do so in order that a pecuniary advantage might be obtained from a third party. Having considered section 6 of the Disability Discrimination Act, we are of the opinion that this would be contrary to the purposes of the Act and, in particular, contrary to section 6(11) of the Act, which expressly provides that such adjustments are not to be required."

6. We consider that the Employment Tribunal were, on the basis of their findings of fact, entirely justified in reaching these conclusions. We find no error of law in the Decision. The appeal must be dismissed.