Hayley Young v Commissioner of Police and the Metropolis

A claimant need not establish a specific medical diagnosis to show a disability under section 6(1) of the Equality Act 2010. The tribunal must instead determine whether a physical or mental impairment had a substantial and long-term adverse effect on normal day-to-day activities.

However, a tribunal may decide the case as framed by the parties. Where the claimant relies on one underlying condition to connect otherwise disparate symptoms and absences, it may assess whether reliable evidence establishes that condition, or any other condition linking them. A reasoned rejection of limited medical evidence is not perverse merely because another tribunal might have given it greater weight.

The appellant, a police communications officer, was dismissed for unacceptable attendance after 17 sickness absences over 26 months. She brought claims for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination.

The Employment Tribunal, in a judgment sent on 20 December 2022, found that she was not disabled at the material time. Although her symptoms were substantial, it found that they were attributable to a range of ailments and not to fibromyalgia or another underlying condition capable of establishing a long-term impairment. It dismissed her claims.

On appeal, the appellant challenged the findings concerning fibromyalgia, the weight given to her medical evidence, and the Tribunal’s focus on a diagnostic label rather than her symptoms.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal was entitled to give considerably reduced weight to the GP’s brief July 2019 indication of fibromyalgia. The letter contained factual errors, there was no specialist or fuller medical evidence supporting the diagnosis at the material time, and the Tribunal gave detailed reasons for its evaluation. Its findings were not perverse.

2. There was no inconsistency in finding that fibromyalgia and disability were established from August 2020 but not in July 2019. The later finding rested on a specialist diagnosis, benefit awards and a finding that symptoms had deteriorated.

3. Section 6(1) of the Equality Act 2010 does not require an impairment to correspond to a specific medical diagnosis. Ministry of Defence v Hay [2008] ICR 1247 illustrated that principle. The Tribunal did not, however, reject the claim for want of a diagnostic label.

4. The appellant had agreed that the disability issue was whether she was disabled by reason of fibromyalgia. It was therefore legitimate for the Tribunal to determine that case and to examine whether fibromyalgia, or another underlying condition, linked the varied symptoms and absences into a substantial and long-term impairment. It found no reliable evidence of such a link during the material period. Its finding that the absences reflected intermittent ailments rather than an underlying condition was open to it on the evidence.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal dismissed: [2024] EAT 55.
• Employment Tribunal: In a judgment sent on 20 December 2022, it dismissed the unfair-dismissal claim and found that the claimant was not disabled at the material time, with the consequence that the disability-discrimination claims failed.