Where an employer knows (or reasonably ought to know) that an employee is disabled, the duty to make reasonable adjustments is engaged. Employers must take reasonable steps to remove any disadvantage at which an employee is placed by reason of their disability. A recent EAT case looked at whether it could be a failure to make reasonable adjustments where an adjustment was raised at appeal stage.
In Cairns v Royal Mail Group, the Claimant was employed as a postal delivery person on outdoor duties. A knee injury and osteoarthritis (a disability) meant he could no longer work outdoors. He moved to a supernumerary indoor role for a period. The Respondent began a consultation to dismiss him on grounds of ill-health retirement. He could no longer do his outdoor job. At the time, no other indoor vacancy existed. The Claimant was dismissed.
He claimed unfair dismissal. He also claimed that failing to wait, at appeal stage, for the imminent merger of the Claimant’s postal centre with another centre (which would have created indoor roles), was a failure to make reasonable adjustments and discrimination arising from a disability. The employment tribunal dismissed all claims, holding that there comes a time when a surplus job must come to an end.
The Claimant appealed the outcome on discrimination. The Employment Appeal Tribunal, allowing the appeal, held that the tribunal had focused too much on the situation at the time of dismissal. In doing so it had failed to consider an essential part of the Claimant’s case: that the Respondent ought, at the time of his appeal, to have kept him in employment so that he could be assigned to an indoor role on the merger of the two postal offices.
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