Charles Pigott explores reasonable adjustments, trial periods & alternative employment
- The latest reasonable adjustments ruling from the Employment Appeal Tribunal consolidates our understanding of how the duty applies when an employee can no longer perform their current role due to disability, but wishes to be re-deployed.
Like many issues relating to the reasonable adjustments duty, the story starts with the House of Lords’ judgment in Archibald v Fife Council [2004] UKHL 32.
In one of the earliest disability discrimination cases to reach the House of Lords, Ms Archibald’s claim was brought under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA 1995). The definition of the duty to make reasonable adjustments in DDA 1995 differed in a number of respects from its successor in the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010). However, the underlying principles are sufficiently close for cases decided under DDA 1995 to continue to be authoritative on the issues addressed in this article.
Under DDA 1995, one circumstance in which the duty could be triggered was if any ‘arrangements
