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17 February 2017 / Spencer Keen
Issue: 7734 / Categories: Features , Discrimination
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Room to manoeuvre?

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Beware the length of the judge’s foot in cases involving reasonable adjustments to services, warns Spencer Keen
  • FirstGroup v Paulley illustrates that the final arbiter in any reasonable adjustments case is the judge.

FirstGroup, the respondent in the case of Paulley v FirstGroup, is a bus company. On its buses it provides a space where a wheelchair user can place his/her wheelchair. FirstGroup’s policy governing the use of that space allowed a non-wheelchair user to occupy the space but stated that, if the space was needed by a wheelchair user, that would be asked to move. The policy did not require the driver to do anything more and, if the non-wheelchair user refused to move, FirstGroup took the view that nothing more could be done.

On 24 February 2012 Mr Doug Paulley, who is a wheelchair user, attempted to catch the 9.40 bus from Wetherby to Leeds. A lady with a buggy was occupying the wheelchair space. The driver asked her to move but she refused, because, she said, she could not

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