Background
Dean Bean, a long-serving civil enforcement officer with severe dyslexia, was summarily dismissed by NSL Limited for gross misconduct in June 2019. NSL concluded that he had falsely recorded his whereabouts during part of a patrol on 19 April 2019. Bean maintained that he had completed the patrol and that location data from his handheld device was unreliable.
Bean also complained that the allegations and technical evidence were unclear, that he had not received appropriate disability-related support during the investigation, and that he had been required to sign handwritten investigation notes he could not read or understand. The Employment Tribunal upheld claims of unfair dismissal, indirect disability discrimination, failure to make reasonable adjustments, and disability-related harassment.
By a majority, the Tribunal also found that Bean had committed the alleged misconduct, rejected his wrongful-dismissal claim, and reduced his unfair-dismissal compensatory award by 100%. A minority would have found that NSL had not proved the misconduct and that the dismissal was wrongful. The Tribunal unanimously declined to reduce the basic award.
The Court’s Holding
The Employment Appeal Tribunal dismissed NSL’s challenges to the unfair-dismissal ruling and the unreduced basic award. Read fairly as a whole, the Tribunal had found that the persistent lack of clarity in the allegations and technical evidence made the dismissal unfair notwithstanding the internal appeal. The finding that dismissal was inevitable was properly reflected in the 100% reduction of the compensatory award. The Tribunal was also entitled to conclude that Bean’s conduct did not make a reduction of the basic award just and equitable.
The EAT upheld the reasonable-adjustment finding concerning NSL’s expectation that Bean sign investigation notes at the end of meetings. That practice placed him at a substantial disadvantage because his dyslexia prevented him from reading and understanding the notes before signing them, and allowing him to take them away for assisted review was a sufficiently identified reasonable step.
The EAT allowed NSL’s appeal grounds concerning indirect discrimination and both harassment findings. The Tribunal had not determined whether the challenged practices placed disabled people as a group at a particular disadvantage and had conflated indirect-discrimination justification with the separate reasonable-adjustment analysis. Its harassment reasoning did not adequately explain how the conduct related to disability or make the necessary findings about a prohibited purpose or effect under section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. The EAT reserved disposal pending further submissions, so it did not finally determine in this judgment what orders should follow from those errors.
Key Takeaways
- An internal appeal does not necessarily cure a dismissal where unclear allegations and incomprehensible technical evidence continue to undermine the overall fairness of the process.
- An employer that knows of an employee’s dyslexia may need to adjust an investigation process proactively; the duty does not depend on the employee requesting the precise adjustment later identified.
- Indirect discrimination requires findings about group disadvantage and justification, while harassment requires clear findings connecting the conduct to disability and establishing a prohibited purpose or effect.
Why It Matters
The decision emphasizes that technical evidence used in disciplinary proceedings must be presented clearly enough for the employee to understand and answer it, particularly where the employer knows that a disability affects the employee’s ability to process written material.
It also cautions tribunals to analyze reasonable adjustments, indirect discrimination, and harassment as distinct statutory claims. Allowing appeal grounds because that analysis was deficient does not itself settle the ultimate disposition, which remained reserved in this case.