Duty to make reasonable adjustments meaning

James Plummer v Royal Herbert Freehold Limited [2018] Lexis Citation 48 What are the practical implications of this case? Businesses that previously regarded themselves as landlords may, in reality, be treated as service providers and therefore have an anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments. As a result, the needs of disabled people must be accommodated, and importantly this applies even where there are currently no disabled users of the service. A further consequence is that, as a service provider, the company must consider altering physical features—a duty not imposed on landlords under the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010). Another practical point concerns the potential scale of injury to feelings awards—in this matter, £9,000 was awarded, the highest known award in a civil disability discrimination claim. PSLProperty comment: The County Court is not a court of record, therefore the judgment carries no precedential weight as such; nevertheless, it is notable as the first decision of its type and will alarm management companies that viewed themselves as controllers of...

KTS v Governing Body of a Community Primary School [2024] UKUT 139 (AAC) What are the practical implications of this case? This ruling offers plain, significant direction on how the FTT should approach disability discrimination cases about reasonable adjustments under the EqA 2010—particularly where a claimant has not adequately particularised their case and/or where a child has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The Judge developed the principles identified in SS v Proprietor of an Independent School [2024] UKUT 29, giving further emphasis to the relationship between special educational provision under the CFA 2014 and the duties on non-independent schools to make reasonable adjustments in line with the EqA 2010. It clarifies how the FTT should deal with sparse particulars and EHCP contexts, without letting CFA duties eclipse EqA obligations. The message is one of practical alignment rather than displacement of parallel regimes. What was the background? The background involved ‘D’, a child with an EHCP and a diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, who was...

In this issue: Education Public procurement Governance Children’s social care Planning Healthcare Licensing Local government finance Daily and weekly news alerts New and updated content New Q&A Education ‘Reasonable Adjustments’ vs ‘Special Educational Provision’. Upper Tribunal considers their overlap (KTS v GB of a School) This appeal to the Upper Tribunal (UT) challenged a First-tier Tribunal (FTT) decision on a claim of ‘reasonable adjustments’ under the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010). The UT allowed the appeal, holding that the FTT had not properly determined the claim advanced and had taken a flawed approach to assessing reasonable adjustments under EqA 2010, ss 20, 21 and 85. The UT explored how the special educational needs framework in the Children and Families Act 2014 (CFA 2014) intersects with the EqA 2010 duty to make reasonable adjustments. The Judge set out clear guidance on the principles Tribunals should apply when deciding cases of this kind. Written by...

This Practice Note outlines the matters an employer must weigh up when obtaining medical assessment reports for their staff and prospective recruits...

The overriding objective Central to the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure (ET Rules) sits the ‘overriding objective’. Its purpose is to ensure employment tribunals (ET) handle cases in a manner that is fair and just. The tribunal is required to give effect to this objective when it is: interpreting the ET Rules, and exercising any power conferred by the ET Rules In addition, the parties and those representing them: must help the tribunal to advance the overriding objective, and must, in particular, co-operate generally with each other and with the tribunal Beyond this broad statement that the objective is to enable ET to resolve cases fairly and justly, the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules (ET Rules 2024), SI 2024/1155, Rule 3, also provides further, more specific illustrations of what this should entail...

This Practice Note sets out the available resources on protections and liabilities arising from actions and omissions that amount to disability discrimination, or other forms of prohibited conduct linked to disability. The level of detail here is intentionally light, as its main function is to signpost subscribers to the comprehensive materials contained in the many further Practice Notes that examine each aspect in full. Its role is to direct readers to linked materials covering each topic in depth. Accordingly, treat this Practice Note as a starting point for research; complete information is located elsewhere via the links below. The characteristics protected The Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010) guards against discrimination and other proscribed conduct relating to certain listed characteristics that people may have. Certain protections apply solely to one such characteristic, while others operate uniformly across them all, collectively known as ‘the protected characteristics’. Some safeguards are characteristic-specific, while others span them all. ‘Disability’ is among them; the remainder are: age gender reassignment ...

Duty to make reasonable adjustments The Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010) establishes a duty to make reasonable adjustments (referred to below as ‘the duty’), which contains three distinct requirements. The third requires that, where a disabled person would, without the provision of an auxiliary aid, face a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter when compared with people who are not disabled, such steps as are reasonable must be taken to supply the auxiliary aid. The situations in which the duty arises differ across workplace settings. Accordingly, the precise circumstances that engage the duty will not be uniform across all settings. For all three requirements, the duty is triggered only where a disabled individual is placed at a substantial disadvantage compared with non‑disabled people ‘in relation to a “relevant matter”’, and what counts as a ‘relevant matter’ (as defined in EqA 2010, Sch 8 Pt 1) varies according to the particular type of workplace. As a result, application of the duty is context‑specific to the workplace in question....