Lydia Edwards v Pick Everard

An employment tribunal’s reasons must be read fairly and as a whole. An appellate tribunal should not subject individual passages to hypercritical analysis. A failure to set out every stage of a legal analysis is not material where the tribunal has decided an earlier dispositive issue and its reasoning permits the parties to understand why they won or lost.

For discrimination arising from disability under section 15 of the Equality Act 2010, the asserted “something” must arise in consequence of disability as a matter of fact. A tribunal may reject the claim on that basis. A requirement to use a shared document system does not breach the duty to make reasonable adjustments unless it places the disabled worker at a substantial disadvantage.

The claimant, a senior construction health and safety consultant with dyslexia, appealed against the dismissal by the London Central Employment Tribunal of disability-discrimination claims. The appeal concerned criticism and disciplinary action relating to her storage of electronic documents, criticism of her personal mobile-phone use, and the inclusion of NHS material about dyslexia in children in a disciplinary-hearing pack.

The claimant alleged direct discrimination, discrimination arising from disability, and a failure to make reasonable adjustments. The central questions were whether the tribunal had erred in its approach to detriment, causation under section 15 of the Equality Act 2010, justification, and substantial disadvantage arising from the requirement to store documents on the respondent’s shared drive.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that none of Grounds 1 to 7 disclosed an error of law.

2. The tribunal was entitled to find that including NHS material about dyslexia in children in the disciplinary pack was not a detriment. It had also found that the material was included because the claimant had declined to provide evidence about the particular effects of her dyslexia, rather than because of disability. It was legitimate to dispose of the direct-discrimination claim once no detriment was established, although the tribunal had in any event addressed the reason for the treatment.

3. The tribunal was likewise entitled to find that raising increased personal mobile-phone use was neither detrimental treatment nor treatment because of disability. Its finding that the increased use resulted from the claimant’s unhappiness about a recruitment process, rather than from disability, was open to it.

4. Under section 15 of the Equality Act 2010, the tribunal permissibly found that using a personal drive to store documents was a personal preference, not something arising in consequence of dyslexia. It also permissibly found, in the alternative, that questioning excessive personal phone use and enforcing the document-storage requirement pursued legitimate workplace aims proportionately. Detailed justification reasoning was not required where the tribunal had found no potentially discriminatory treatment.

5. The reasonable-adjustments claim failed because the requirement to upload documents to the shared drive did not place the claimant at a substantial disadvantage compared with non-disabled persons. That factual conclusion was open to the tribunal.

6. The EAT stressed that tribunal judgments should be read in the round. Reasons need identify the material issues, findings, relevant law and its application, but need not answer questions rendered unnecessary by an earlier dispositive finding.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: appeal dismissed: [2023] EAT 61.
• Employment Tribunal, London Central: dismissed the claimant’s disability-discrimination claims in a judgment sent to the parties on 26 May 2021.