Debra Lingard v Leading Learners Multi Academy Trust

An employer’s actual or constructive knowledge of disability depends on the particular statutory claim. Constructive knowledge requires an objective assessment of what reasonable enquiries would have disclosed in the circumstances. An employer is not fixed with knowledge of a mental-health disability merely because it knew an employee was stressed, where the available material did not indicate a substantial and long-term adverse effect.

An inaccurate composite self-direction on knowledge will not vitiate a tribunal’s decision if its reasons, read fairly as a whole, identify and apply the correct tests. Appellate intervention is not justified where the tribunal’s findings on knowledge were open to it on the evidence.

The claimant, a former headteacher, succeeded before the Manchester Employment Tribunal in her constructive unfair-dismissal claim. Her disability-discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010 were dismissed. The tribunal’s written reasons were sent on 13 August 2020.

The claim had initially alleged disability arising from hypertension. Jointly obtained medical evidence later showed that the relevant impairment was instead a mental-health condition. The respondent conceded disability but denied knowledge of it. The claimant appealed, contending that the tribunal had misstated and misapplied the tests for knowledge and had made perverse findings. The respondent cross-appealed against the tribunal’s finding that the claimant had not forged appraisal signatures.

1. Appeal and cross-appeal dismissed. The tribunal’s statement at paragraph 237 of its reasons was inaccurate if read alone. It wrongly treated the knowledge requirements for direct discrimination, discrimination arising from disability, and reasonable adjustments as substantially the same.

2. The correct distinctions were that direct discrimination under section 13 requires actual knowledge; section 15 requires actual or constructive knowledge; and section 20 requires actual or constructive knowledge both of disability and of the likelihood that the person will be affected by the relevant PCP. However, the tribunal had stated the proper tests elsewhere in its reasons. Its findings, read as a whole, accorded with those tests.

3. Applying the approach in Gallop v Newport County Council [2014] IRLR 211, knowledge concerns the facts constituting disability. The employer must make the factual assessment and cannot simply adopt an adviser’s legal conclusion. What reasonable enquiries require is objective and fact-sensitive. The occupational-health evidence did not indicate that the claimant’s symptoms were long-term or likely to meet the statutory duration requirement. The tribunal was entitled to find that the respondent neither knew, nor could reasonably have been expected to know, of the mental-health disability before the claimant resigned.

4. The fact that the claimant, her GP and her advisers had initially attributed her symptoms to hypertension supported the tribunal’s conclusion that the respondent could not reasonably have been expected to identify the true impairment without the later psychiatric evidence. The tribunal had also considered, and rejected on the evidence, any suggestion that the respondent had deliberately avoided knowledge.

5. On the cross-appeal, an assertion that a signature was forged was an opinion implying dishonesty, not determinative evidence of fact. In light of the evidence that appraisals had generally been agreed and that signatures had been added for innocent, though incorrect, administrative reasons, the tribunal was entitled to find that the witness genuinely but mistakenly believed forgery had occurred. Its reasons met the required standard.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: The claimant’s appeal and the respondent’s cross-appeal were dismissed: [2023] EAT 52.
• Employment Tribunal, Manchester: The claimant’s constructive unfair-dismissal claim succeeded, but her disability-discrimination claims were dismissed. Written reasons were sent on 13 August 2020.