United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal

APPEARANCES

 

For the Appellants	MR PAUL MEE (of Counsel) Instructed by: Messrs EDC Lord & Co Solicitors 1200 Uxbridge House Hayes Middlesex UB4 8JD


 


JUDGE A WAKEFIELD

1. This is an ex-parte preliminary hearing to determine whether the appeal by Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward Ltd, against the decision of an Employment Tribunal sitting at Ashford, Kent, and given on 15 January 2001 should proceed to a full hearing.
2. The decision of the Employment Tribunal was on the preliminary issue whether the Respondent, the Applicant in the original proceedings, was disabled within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. At the hearing, the Appellants had conceded that the Respondent suffered from an impairment within the meaning of section 1 of the Act, but they denied that the impairment had a substantial and long term adverse effect upon her ability to carry out normal day to day activities.
3. The Respondent argued before the Employment Tribunal that her impairment affected her day to day activities as regards mobility, continence and concentration. The Employment Tribunal agreed with her on each head, having referred in the Decision to the medical evidence, the list of normal day to day activities, as set out in Schedule 1 of the Act and the guidelines under section 3.
4. It is argued before us that the Employment Tribunal erred in law in reaching that conclusion, having made no specific findings as to the frequency of the occurrence of the Respondent's various symptoms, and their consequent effect on her activities and being, it is argued, wrong in law to conclude that the symptoms did in any event affect continence or concentration.
5. We do not agree. In our view the Employment Tribunal were not required, in terms of the Act or the guidelines, to make any findings as to frequency of symptoms. It is sufficient that there is a conclusion, sustainable on the evidence before the Employment Tribunal, that such symptoms have a substantial and long term adverse effect on the ability to carry out normal day to day activities.
6. While we might not have concluded that there was an impairment, as regards concentration, as opposed to continence and mobility, it would have been, in any event, sufficient for the decision of the Employment Tribunal to be sustainable if any one of those three factors, said to have been an impairment, had in fact been shown.
7. There is therefore no error of law shown by the Appellants, and the appeal is dismissed.