In Cairns v Royal Mail Group, the Claimant was employed as a postal delivery person on outdoor duties. He could no longer work outdoors due to a knee injury and osteoarthritis, which is considered a disability. Subsequently, he had moved to a supernumerary indoor role for a period.
The Respondent began consultation to dismiss him on grounds of ill-health retirement, as he could no longer work in his outdoor job. At the time, no other indoor vacancy was available, and so the Claimant was dismissed. As a result of this, the Claimant had made a claim for unfair dismissal. He also claimed that failing to wait for the imminent merger of the Claimant’s postal centre with another centre, which would have created vacancies for 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 due to discrimination. Allowing the appeal, The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the tribunal had concentrated too much on the circumstances at the time of the dismissal. By doing this, they had failed to consider an essential part of the Claimant’s case: that at the time of his appeal, the Respondent should have kept him in employment so that he could be assigned to an indoor role, on the merger of the two postal offices.
It was the Claimant’s case that it would have been a reasonable adjustment to keep him in employment for this short period. He also claimed that his inability to work outdoors was a direct result of his disability, and therefore, the decision to dismiss him for this reason was discriminatory and unjustified given the plan for new indoor roles.
This case highlights the importance of considering reasonable adjustments whereby an employee is discovered to have a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Under the Act, employers are required to make changes to job roles and workplaces to enable individuals with a disability to carry out their functions as a non-disabled employee would. For your information, what is ‘reasonable’ will be judged against the following criteria:
- The extent of any disruption that an adjustment may cause to your organisation or other employees;
- The cost and your budget;
- Practicality;
- The effectiveness of the adjustment in helping the employee do their job; and
- The availability of financial or other assistance from certain schemes such as the government’s Access to Work programme.
Written by Lucy Williams FCILEx
Head of Employment Law and HR at Key Group Services Limited