August 25, 2011
In a recent judgement the Employment Appeals Tribunal concluded that a debt adviser who worked in the Birmingham Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB) was not unfairly dismissed as the CAB could not reasonably have known about her agoraphobia and therefore was under no duty to make reasonable adjustments, as required under section 4A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
The employee, a Miss Wilcox, originally worked at the central Birmingam CAB. Due to pay cuts in 2006, she was no longer able to afford to park her car in the city centre and was uncomfortable using public transport as she got anxious travelling. Initially she was allowed to work from home but this was stopped. She asked to work at a CAB nearer her home but did not, at that time, mention her anxiety about travel. She ultimately resigned and claimed unfair dismissal.
In making his judgement Mr Justice Underhill alluded to the difficulties her employer faced in distinguishing between genuine mental illness and a general dissatisfaction about working conditions. He said “It is important not to lose sight of the fact that, while (as we have said above) the statute does not require that the employer should know (actually or constructively) the precise diagnosis of a putative disability, it does require that he should know (actually or constructively) that the employee is suffering from a mental impairment whose adverse effects are both substantial and long term. The appellant’s condition was on any view an unusual one, and, without in any way impugning her good faith, it was not easy to disentangle the effects of any mental health condition from the effects of unhappiness about her working conditions more generally.”
