Reasonable adjustments for disability

An Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has decided that reasonable adjustments for disabled employees (section 4A of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995) are only to help them remain in employment.  Employers are not required to facilitate ill-health retirement.  Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust v Mylott.

A disabled employee went off sick with stress following a failed grievance against his employer. He was eventually dismissed because he was unable to say when he might return to work.

He appealed against both the results of the grievance procedure and his dismissal, claiming disability discrimination and unfair dismissal. The Employment Tribunal ruled that one of the reasons the dismissal was unfair was that an employer’s duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled employees included a duty to take steps to facilitate an application for ill-health retirement for employees to enable him to retire on favourable terms. It decided that the employer had failed to consider the possibility of the employee taking ill-health retirement.

However, while the EAT agreed with the Tribunal decision that the dismissal was unfair, it disagreed that reasonable adjustments included offering help with ill-health retirement. It said that the employer should take reasonable steps to enable employees to remain employed, not to provide them with compensation for ceasing to be employed. .