F Ntakibirora Mahoro v The Northern Care Alliance

An appellate tribunal should read Employment Tribunal reasons fairly and as a whole. It should not interfere merely because a party identifies individual omissions or prefers a different factual conclusion. Perversity has a high threshold, and reasons need only explain in broad terms why the party lost.

A failure to provide training or to postpone an appraisal is not unfavourable treatment under Equality Act 2010 section 15 unless it is reasonably capable of being regarded as a detriment. An employer’s failure by oversight to provide a requested dismissal statement may be reasonable where the employee has already received the reasons for dismissal.

The claimant, a Band 6 biomedical scientist with a long-term spinal condition, appealed against the Employment Tribunal’s dismissal of claims including failures to make reasonable adjustments, discrimination arising from disability, disability-related harassment, unfair dismissal and failure to provide written reasons for dismissal.

The central adjustments concerned reduced daily hours and a laboratory chair with brake-loaded castors. The Tribunal found that the requested working pattern would disrupt a busy laboratory and risk patient safety, and that a chair with castors at laboratory-bench height presented an unacceptable safety risk. It also found that ill-health dismissal was justified and fair.

The appeal principally alleged perversity, failures to consider evidence and inadequate reasons. The Employment Appeal Tribunal used the Burns/Barke procedure to obtain clarification from the Employment Judge.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal’s reasons, read fairly and as a whole, adequately explained its conclusions. The claimant did not meet the high threshold for perversity.

2. The Tribunal was entitled to treat an early finish as the claimant’s primary request for reduced hours. Its clarified reasoning also covered other proposed six-hour patterns. It permissibly concluded that reduced hours over five days would leave work unfinished, create recruitment difficulties and adversely affect laboratory service and patient safety. The arrangements therefore went beyond a reasonable adjustment.

3. The Tribunal was entitled to find that a brake-loaded-castor chair was not a reasonable adjustment. The manufacturer’s disclaimer and the evidence of safety risk were inextricably linked. A castor chair was unsafe at high laboratory benches, while moving a chair with glides was unsuitable for the claimant. No error of law arose from its treatment of the Access to Work quotation.

4. For discrimination arising from disability under Equality Act 2010 section 15, a failure to afford training must still amount to unfavourable treatment. It was open to the Tribunal to find no detriment in deferring training shortly before a substantial absence. It was also entitled to find that postponing an appraisal was not unfavourable treatment and did not cause the withheld pay increment.

5. The dismissal was a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim of ensuring that contractual Band 6 duties could be performed safely. The adjustments required to perform the full role were not reasonable, and the duties the claimant could perform without them did not amount to the substantive role. The dismissal also fell within the range of reasonable responses for unfair-dismissal purposes.

6. The employer failed to respond to the claimant’s request under Employment Rights Act 1996 section 92. However, the Tribunal was entitled to find that the failure was not unreasonable under section 93 because the dismissal and subsequent correspondence had already supplied the reasons for dismissal.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal dismissed: [2025] EAT 85.
• Employment Tribunal: The Tribunal dismissed the relevant complaints of disability discrimination, unfair dismissal and failure to provide a written statement of reasons for dismissal. Its judgment was sent to the parties on 14 July 2022.