The Claimant was employed by the Respondent as a teacher. He was dismissed for the given reason of conduct. This concerned, principally, his admitted conduct in carrying out a request, made by a colleague, to give pupils taking an assessment exam, manuscript notes that she had prepared for them to follow.
The Tribunal found that the Claimant had, at the relevant time, a mental health disability. It was his case that this had impaired his judgment and decision-making. He claimed discrimination arising from disability and failure to comply with the duty of reasonable adjustment. He also claimed that he had been automatically unfairly dismissed for making protected disclosures about the extent of the malpractice, and, in any event, ordinarily unfairly dismissed.
The Tribunal found that the Claimant was disabled at the relevant time. However, it did not find that his conduct arose in consequence of his disability. In any event it considered that dismissal was a proportionate response, and it was not a failure of reasonable adjustment for the Respondent not to have imposed a lesser sanction. The unfair dismissal claims also failed. The Claimant appealed the dismissal of his Equality Act 2010 claims, and the decision on the ordinary unfair dismissal claim.
Held: The Tribunal had erred (1) in taking the wrong legal approach to whether the conduct for which the Claimant was dismissed arose in consequence of his disability; (2) in not applying the correct legal approach to the consideration, when applying the proportionality test, of the possibility of imposing a lesser sanction; (3) in relation to whether it would have been a reasonable adjustment to impose a lesser sanction, given the impact on that question of its other erroneous conclusions. Pnaiser v NHS England [2016] IRLR 170 and City of York Council v Grosset [2018] ICR 1492 applied.
The Tribunal did not err in dismissing the unfair dismissal claim. O’Brien v Bolton St Catherine’s Academy [2017] ICR 737 and City of York Council v Grosset (above) considered and applied.
Citations:
[2019] UKEAT 0031 – 19 – 3009
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Employment
Updated: 25 November 2022; Ref: scu.650896
