Category: Equality Act 2010

Categories
Disability Duty of Care Employment Law Equality Act 2010 Health and Safety HR Lousha Reynolds Mental Health Neurodiversity Reasonable Adjustments Risk Assessment Sick Pay Stress

Stress at Work: More than just a bad day

Woman with head in her hands leans over a desk with a laptop in front of her

As we mark Stress Awareness Week 2026, we’re looking at the legal framework that governs mental health in the UK workplace.

Stress isn’t just a HR issue. It’s a significant legal responsibility. Whether you’re managing a team or navigating your own workload, understanding the boundaries of the law is essential for a healthy, compliant work environment.

1. The legal duty of care

Under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, employers have a statutory duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. This isn’t limited to hard hats and trip hazards. It includes mental wellbeing, too.

  • Risk Assessments: Just as you’d assess the dangers of a faulty wire, you must assess the risk of work-related stress.
  • The Management Standards: The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) outlines six key areas that, if not managed, lead to poor health and reduced productivity: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change.

2. When stress becomes a disability

While stress itself isn’t a disability, the effects of prolonged stress, such as clinical depression or anxiety disorders, often meet the criteria under the Equality Act 2010.

An employee is considered disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment that has a “substantial and long-term adverse effect” on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

What this means for employers:

  • If stress triggers a disability, you have a legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments. This might include:
    • Flexible working hours or “soft” start times.
    • Redistributing certain tasks to other team members.
    • Providing a quieter workspace or more frequent breaks.

3. Avoiding a personal injury claim

If an employer is aware (or ought to have been aware) that an employee is struggling and fails to act, they risk a claim for negligence. For a claim to succeed, the psychiatric injury must have been “reasonably foreseeable.”

The Red Flag Rule: If an employee tells you they’re struggling, or if their performance suddenly dips alongside signs of burnout, the clock starts ticking. Ignorance is rarely a valid legal defence once the signs are visible.

4. Practical steps for Stress Awareness Week

To stay on the right side of the law (and keep your team happy), consider these three actions:

ActionPurpose
Wellness Action Plans (WAPs)A proactive tool for employees to share what helps them stay well.
Training for ManagersEnsuring supervisors can spot signs of burnout before it becomes a grievance.
Open CommunicationReducing the stigma so employees feel safe raising issues early.

Work-related stress is often a symptom of systemic issues rather than individual weakness. By treating mental health with the same rigour as physical safety, UK businesses can avoid costly employment tribunals and, more importantly, foster a culture where people actually want to work. This year’s campaign, led by the Stress Management Society, focuses on the theme #BeTheChange, encouraging small, consistent, and positive actions. We think that’s a great place to start.

CONTACT US

We’re here to help with any questions or concerns you may have. Whether you need expert advice or would like an initial conversation about our services, pricing, or the options available, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. At Refreshing Law, what sets us apart from other law firms is that you’ll get to speak to an experienced employment lawyer right from the very first call.

02920 599 993

07737 055 584

lreynolds@refreshinglawltd.co.uk

GET IN TOUCH

Lousha Reynolds
Refreshing Law

Categories
Disability Discrimination Law Diversity Employment Law Equality Act 2010 Lousha Reynolds Neurodiversity Recruitment

Thinking Differently: Why neurodiversity is a workplace superpower

Collaborative meeting in an office around a table

With it being Neurodiversity Celebration Week (16th–20th March), we felt that it was time to move beyond awareness and start talking more about action.

In the UK, it’s estimated that around 1 in 7 people are neurodivergent. This includes ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, and Tourette’s, among others. For too long, recruitment processes and office environments have been designed around the “typical” brain. Often filtering out some of the most creative, analytical, and dedicated talent in the workforce.

From a British employment law perspective, supporting different ways of thinking is not only the right thing to do, but is also a legal requirement. To help business leaders and HR professionals, we’ve focused in on a few things to help better recognise and support neurodiversity at work.

Under the Equality Act 2010, many neurodivergent conditions meet the legal definition of a disability, where that condition has a substantial, adverse impact on the individual’s ability to carry out their normal daily activities. In such cases, this means that employees have a right to protection from discrimination, harassment, and victimisation.

Crucially, employers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. This duty is “proactive,” meaning you shouldn’t wait for an employee to reach a breaking point before offering support. By fostering an environment where adjustments are normalised, you stay ahead of legal risks and, more importantly, help your team thrive.

2. Redefining “reasonable adjustments”

Support doesn’t always mean expensive equipment. Often, the most impactful changes cost nothing but a shift in mindset. Effective adjustments often include:

  • Environmental tweaks: Providing noise-cancelling headphones, adjustable lighting, or quiet zones for deep focus.
  • Communication shifts: Giving instructions in writing rather than just verbally or allowing for camera-off meetings to reduce sensory overload.
  • Flexibility: Allowing for flexible start and end times to avoid the sensory stress of peak-time commutes.

3. Rethinking recruitment

The traditional hour-long, face-to-face interview is often a test of social performance rather than job competency. To support different ways of thinking, we can look at:

  • Skills-based assessments: Letting candidates demonstrate what they can do rather than just what they can say.
  • Clear job descriptions: Removing jargon and fluff (like “must be a great multitasker”) if it isn’t essential to the role.

4. Moving from “culture fit” to “culture enhancement”

In corporate culture, we often talk about culture fit. However, this can inadvertently lead to mini-me hiring, where everyone thinks and acts the same way. 

To truly celebrate neurodiversity, we should look to add to our work culture. A neurodivergent employee might approach a problem from an angle no one else has considered. They might spot patterns others miss or bring a level of hyper-focus that drives a project to completion. Different ways of thinking are a competitive advantage.

How to get involved this Neurodiversity Celebration Week

This week is a fantastic opportunity to kickstart the conversation. You can:

  • Educate: Host a lunch-and-learn or share resources from the Neurodiversity Celebration Week website.
  • Listen: Create a safe space for employees to share their experiences (if they wish) and what support looks like for them.
  • Audit: Review your internal policies, from HR handbooks to your physical office layout, to see if they are inclusive of all brain types.

Neurodiversity isn’t something to be fixed or managed. It’s something to be celebrated. When we design a world that works for neurodivergent people, we inadvertently create a better, more flexible, and more productive workplace for everyone.

CONTACT US

We’re here to help with any questions or concerns you may have. Whether you need expert advice or would like an initial conversation about our services, pricing, or the options available, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. At Refreshing Law, what sets us apart from other law firms is that you’ll get to speak to an experienced employment lawyer right from the very first call.

02920 599 993

07737 055 584

lreynolds@refreshinglawltd.co.uk

GET IN TOUCH

Lousha Reynolds
Refreshing Law

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Discrimination Law Diversity Employment Law Equality Act 2010 Gender Inclusivity Video

Video | ‘Sex’ under the Equality Act 2010

Royal Courts of Justice, London

Our latest video is available to view on the Refreshing Law YouTube channel – please click here to watch Anna’s video which discusses the recent ruling from the Scottish case that went to the Supreme Court and has given us a ruling on the meaning of the protected characteristic of ‘sex’ under the Equality Act 2010. This video discusses the potential issues and implications arising from this ruling.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Disability Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Reasonable Adjustments Right to Work

Reasonable adjustments for a disability

View of the City of London at sunset

I have had a handful of recent cases where Occupational Health have advised employers in relation to employees with anxiety problems that the employee’s duties exacerbate their condition.

In all of these cases a recommendation has been reducing telephone duties so that the employee is taking less calls during the day or completely stopping telephone duties altogether so the employee is, for example, focusing on emails rather than telephone calls. In these cases, the employer has done entirely the right thing in trying to follow the Occupational Health advice, adjusting the duties accordingly, but there has been no plan for the long term. What is accommodatable initially and what is planned for when, after a few months, the employee has got into the habit of not dealing with telephone calls either at all or dealing with only a few? If you aren’t careful you end up in a situation where the employee is not performing large parts of their role and everyone is stuck.

Rather than agreeing outright to the adjustments, it may be sensible to agree to a temporary adjustment with a discussed plan for how you get from that place of a reduced requirement to carry out a particular activity and back to the contractual duties being performed.

To put it another way, given the cost it takes to support somebody’s mental health to make adjustments, it is misleading to alter things that are not going to be able to be accommodated in the long run. That just creates false expectations and could be achieving more harm than good over time.

Alternatives to reducing the duties completely might be:

  • Less calls, so allowing more time between calls in order to take breaks;

  • If there have been difficult calls, having a strategy for what steps will be taken around managing the feelings that arise from those difficult calls; maybe discussing it with the manager or taking a time out;

  • Other steps that might be agreed as part of a work related action plan.

Remember Occupational Health are just providing you with suggestions – it is up to you to decide, as an employer, whether or not you can accommodate those suggestions. It is possible that you will have roles within your organisation that cannot actually be adjusted to prevent some core duty of that role taking place. In that scenario you might actually be saying no you can’t make a particular adjustment because it is not reasonable to do so.If we aren’t making an adjustment then we need to be able to justify why not to a Judge, if that ever became necessary, so having evidence to back up that decision will be useful. Is there  evidence of how many phone calls a day are taken in that role?  What is the proportion of the day spent doing other activities? Are the phone calls critical to generating the work that the person then does?

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Discrimination Law Diversity Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010

The Buckland Review of Autism Employment

View of the British Houses of Parliament from the river Thames, where the Employment Rights Bill is being debated

At the moment only 3 in 10 autistic people of working age are in employment. Robert Buckland, a Conservative MP and Lord Chancellor has conducted a review to report to Government on the issue. What can we learn from it?

  • Estimates are that 1 in 70 people are autistic and if you have numbers in your workforce, you are likely to have autistic people working for you.
  • Autistic people are facing the largest pay gap of all disability groups.
  • It paints a negative picture for people around the experience of recruitment processes. The challenges autistic job seekers face navigating generic job descriptions, interview questions and challenging sensory environments, where often the focus is on somebody’s social skills rather than the actual skills necessary to do the job.
  • Even after finding work, being in employment is a challenge. The Report talks about the lack of adjustments with only 35% of autistic employees being fully open with their employer about their position and 1 in 10 choosing not to disclose to anybody at work. The Report highlights poor knowledge of autism and managers being underprepared to identify and implement adjustments. Often the onus  is being placed on the employee to identify and ask for adjustments rather than the employer taking the initiative and complying with the duty the Equality Act 2010 places on them.

If you want to read more about the Report, here it is: The Buckland Review of Autism Employment: report and recommendations

In terms of recommendations, the Report contains a long list of recommendations and things that are relevant to employers and the practical things they can do. These include nominating buddies and mentors within the workforce, implement training, awareness raising, working with Access to Work (the Government funded department, who can pay up to £1,000 for adaptations in the workplace and up to £3,000 for other support),  offering paid internships for autistic young people, siting employees in a quiet place and not a high traffic area, time out rooms, noise cancelling headphones and adjusting recruitment processes so that they are focused on aptitude based assessments rather than interview questions.

Pick one thing and try and improve that…

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Disability Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Protected Characteristics Reasonable Adjustments

Disability and reasonable adjustments

View of the City of London at sunset

If as a result of somebody’s disability they become unable to do the current role that they are employed in and the employer is looking to exit the employee from that position, they are obligated to look at alternative employment. This is the case in unfair dismissal law, before you even think about the disability angle.

In a recent case (Miller v Rentokil 2024 EAT 37), the particular employee concerned had multiple sclerosis, which is a deemed disability under the Equality Act 2010, a bit like cancer, ie. the employee does not have to jump through hoops to show that there is a substantial disadvantage, has a long term effect and has difficulty with normal day to day activities. They are deemed as disabled, so we move directly to consider how they have been treated.

Once the employee has a disability, then the duty to make reasonable adjustments kicks in. In this case, the employee was a field based pest controller and the role involved him working at heights for 40% of the time. He could no longer do this and could only work very slowly. This particular employer looked at other jobs within the organisation and put him forward for an administrator role but decided not to recruit him and dismissed him.

He claims that failing to place him in the administrator role on a trial basis amounted to a failure to make a reasonable adjustment. The Tribunal upheld his claim, as did the Employment Appeal Tribunal. The burden was on the employer to show that it was not reasonable to have put that person into the role on a trial basis. They clearly couldn’t convince a Tribunal of this. On an objective assessment clearly they believed that he met the essential requirements of the job and a trial could have been successful.

The way I look at it, the employer is going to have to convince the Tribunal why it couldn’t do this, and why the employee couldn’t be trained into the role, particularly when it is a large employer. For example, somebody who isn’t used to using computers on a day to day basis might be trained and adapted into doing so.

In this particular case, the employer had actually set tests in verbal usage and maths in relation to their standard interview process. These tests were ones that the employer applied to everybody applying for roles and the Claimant scored 16 out of 30 in the verbal usage test and 7 out of 30 in the maths test. It was clear that the employee didn’t have experience using Excel, the spreadsheet programme, which perhaps explains why the decision maker in the case, a recruitment manager, decided not to slot the employee into the vacancy. It did not however consider any retraining or any trial.

In the case, they went back to Archibald v Fife Council from 2004 and Lady Justice Hale’s summation that making reasonable adjustments requires the employer to treat the disabled person more favourably than others. This too was the case of a manual worker no longer able to carry out her duties for mobility reasons. Lady Justice Hale pointed out that there is no law against discriminating against people with a background in manual work but it might be reasonable for an employer to have to take the difficulty that that person would face into account when considering the transfer of a disabled worker who could no longer do that type of work. Essentially I think that means being more patient and accommodating with someone making a transition.

In this particular case, the administrator role was a more junior one than the technical role the employee had taken on previously. They took into account the fact that his technical knowledge and experience in doing the manual job would actually assist him in being able to be an administrative support worker to those other colleagues doing that role.

They weren’t unsympathetic to the employer having concerns about whether or not he could do the role, but the key to assessing that would have been the trial period.

The other flaw in the employer’s process was not just slotting the employer into that trial. Instead they seemed to have just treated him as any other applicant for the role and possibly even put him up against other people in a recruitment process. The duty to make reasonable adjustments is about prioritising the employee.

The length of the trial period that the courts were talking about in this case was a 4 week trial. Given that is actually quite a short period, it would be wise to pay an extra month’s salary whilst assessing somebody’s suitability in an alternative position rather than dismiss.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech – A minefield for employers

View of the City of London at sunset

You may have seen that David Miller has been successful in establishing that his anti-Zionist beliefs qualify as a philosophical belief and are therefore protected under Section 10 of the Equality Act 2010. This is the latest in a series of cases, such as the Maya Forstater case and the Alison Bailey case showing that the law will potentially protect the right to hold beliefs that are perhaps less fashionable or out of step with others, just as much as it protects more mainstream views.

We’ve known since the Grainger case some years ago that for a belief to be protected, it has to be something that is worthy of respect in a democratic society but essentially the Courts are taking a really wide view of that and it seems that only the most extreme beliefs would be excluded: Naziism is the example that is always given.

This leaves us in a position where if you state your beliefs, for example, in meetings, in the workplace, on social media and others are offended, and the employer wades in on the “side” of others, they risk committing direct discrimination against the person holding that belief. Examples in recent years have included the Page case where they were talking about same sex marriage, Forstater where it involved views on biological sex being immutable (unable to change) and in the David Miller case, the belief that Zionism is problematic for a number of reasons. Therefore, if your belief system is racist or homophobic or anti-islamist, this protects your right to hold that belief and express it. Essentially, the law protects the individual’s right to express their opinions and articulate their beliefs provided that the individual is manifesting their beliefs in a way that is not objectionable, they will be protected by the law of direct discrimination. In contrast to those who step over a line and express their beliefs in an objectionable manner.

This leaves employers having to regulate between groups of staff with opposing views. Up until now, employers have taken a “dampening” approach asking colleagues whose views might cause friction with others to perhaps be quiet about it. The “ we respect your views and you are entitled to have them but given it is causing an issue please can you not go on about it” approach.

That is problematic – the law has imported from European Law and Human Rights Law the concept of proportionality – an employer having a quiet word with colleagues asking them to be mindful perhaps of policies as others have contrary views is going to be proportionate. Wading in and disciplining or excluding a member of staff from certain activities is likely to fall into the disproportionate category.

The traditional approach of having a ‘zero tolerance’ approach in Equality and Diversity Policies to any kind of bullying or harassment gets unstuck; it doesn’t work when we are juggling different beliefs and can lead the employer into direct discrimination territory when penalising someone who has caused offence.

It is still legitimate for a company to set out what its values are and expect staff to behave in a manner which fits in those values. However if the employee is doing their job but causing offence to others when they express their beliefs, real caution needs to be taken.

I recommend that you make it clear in any policies that you do have that in the workplace you may have to listen to views that you find offensive, and others are entitled to express their beliefs, even where those beliefs clash with yours, to make it clear that the employer is having to moderate and balance a range of opinions.

Where an issue emerges, seek advice before taking any steps you might want to and try the test of ‘if this person was expressing a view about [slavery/children being sent down mines being a negative thing] – insert a benign belief here, would we be taking this step’? That is likely to take the emotional heat out of it.

If the employee’s conduct is becoming problematic, can we strip out what the conduct is that is an issue and separate it from the belief? eg:- they are expressing their views to customers and upsetting them, we’ve had complaints.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Confidentiality Disclosure Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Recruitment Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 Right to Work

Reform to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974

View of the British Houses of Parliament from the river Thames, where the Employment Rights Bill is being debated

On 28 October 2023, the 1974 legislation was amended by the Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and accompanying Regulations.

In the past, some offenders were required to disclose their sentences for the rest of their lives. Now, custodial sentences of 4 years or less and of more than 4 years for some less serious crimes, will be spent “after a period of rehabilitation” of up to 7 years after the sentence has been served, provided that no further offence is committed in that period.

PenaltyPrevious Rehabilitation PeriodNew Rehabilitation Period
Community Order1 year beginning with the last day on which the order had effectNow it is the last day on which the order had effect
Custody of 6 months or less 2 years 
Custody up to 1 year 1 year
Custody of 6  months up to 30 months4 years 
Custody of more than 1 year up to 4 years 4 years
Custody of more than 30 months up to 4 years7 years 
Custodial sentences of more than four yearsNever spent7 years
Convictions for serious sexual, violent or terrorist offencesNever spentNever spent

Stricter disclosure rules continue to apply to jobs that involve working with vulnerable people.

The time frames that I have detailed are in relation to offenders who are over the age of 18. Slightly lower periods apply if the offender was under 18 at the time of conviction.

The new time periods are extended in the event of re-offending during the declaration period. A new conviction attracts its own disclosure period and the previous conviction and the new one need to be declared until the end of the original conviction’s active period or if later, the end of the new disclosure period applied to the more recent conviction.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Disability Discrimination Law Diversity Duty of Care Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010 Offer of Employment Reasonable Adjustments Recruitment

Employers making reasonable adjustments in recruitment

View of the City of London at sunset

An applicant for a job who had dyspraxia asked to make an oral job application instead of filling the online form that the employer required. The employer emailed him with repeated requests asking him to explain what his difficulty was with the online process. The individual had difficulty with written communication, indeed that was the reason behind his request in the first place, so he also struggled to deal with these emails. The employer ought to have realised this as they knew about the dyspraxia. The Tribunal ruled that a reasonable employer would have phoned the applicant in order to understand their situation more fully.

A factual quirk of this case is that the applicant was seeking to return to the same team, with the job applications being judged by the same line manager who had dismissed him 8 months previously (failed probation). Understandably, that may have been behind the employer’s reluctance to engage with the individual but what you don’t get to know is to what extent they knew about the dyspraxia during the probationary period and what reasonable adjustments were made at that stage to assist the individual in order to level the playing field and put them into a position where they might have been able to pass the probationary period.

This case illustrates the importance of making reasonable adjustments not only for your own employees such as probationers but for all job applicants. It also illustrates how sometimes the reasonable adjustment is something very cheap and easy to do (a phone call instead of an email) and how as soon as the employer has knowledge there is a disability they should be making adjustments not waiting for the employee to ask.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law

 

Categories
Anna Denton-Jones Disability Employment Law Employment Rights Act 1996 Equality Act 2010

Disability cases — Being able to defend them

Royal Courts of Justice, London

A recent case involving HMRC illustrated some key messages for me about defending a disability case.

In McAllister v Revenue and Customs Commissioners, the employee worked for HMRC for 7 years. He suffered from anxiety and depression and was off work for long periods of time, although some of these absences were not related to his mental health issues. In the last 24 months of employment he had been off for 245 days over 23 different occasions. At the time of dismissal, he had been off for 7 months straight. Often employers want to know “are we in safe territory to dismiss?”. With numbers like that, I’d be saying “why are you still employing?”.

The employer concluded that that level and regularity of absence impacted on productivity and staff morale (all reasonable adjustments had been exhausted). It therefore decided to dismiss. The employee would ordinarily have been entitled to a payment under the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, but the amount paid to him was reduced by 50% because they were penalising certain behaviour. That behaviour included failure to answer calls, delaying returning relevant forms, displaying disruptive behaviour and turning up late during a phased return to work.

Unsurprisingly, the employee appealed the penalty and his award was increased to 80%. He also claimed discrimination arising from disability under S.15 of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to his dismissal and the reduction of the payment.

The employer agreed the employee was disabled – this is not worth challenging unless there is real doubt over the employee qualifying as disabled. The employer is better off focussing on the lack of discrimination.

In such a case the narrative the employer is looking to tell the Tribunal is basically that “yes the person is disabled, look at all the things we did to look after him and level the playing field (reasonable adjustments). Unfortunately, the level of absence got so bad it followed this pattern – look how much time the employee was taking off and how frequently (see the figures above). We tried to manage it, and this is the advice we got from occupational health and this is what we did but it made no difference”.

Where you can evidence that for the Tribunal, it is then likely to find, as here, that the dismissal was a proportionate means of achieving the employer’s aim of ensuring that staff were capable of demonstrating satisfactory attendance and a good standard of attendance, which also comprised the aims of the maintenance of a fair, effective and transparent sickness management regime, and the efficient use of resources. The Tribunal had found that M’s absence had a very real impact on HMRC’s use of resources, in particular, on time management and staff morale.

If you think about the compensation scheme, it is a benefit – to get a disability claim off the ground you have to be able to show an act of unfavourable treatment – here the employee failed to do so as follows: the relevant treatment was the payment to the employee, the object of which was to compensate the jobholder for loss of employment that is beyond his or her control. That was made because of dismissal due to disability-related absence and disability was behind that. However, being treated as entitled to a payment– was not unfavourable treatment; if anything, it was more favourable than it would have been if the employee had been dismissed for a reason other than his disability. This shows it is key to fighting cases to really drill down into the specific wording of the law – just because someone feels aggrieved about something doesn’t mean they will get themselves through that successfully.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law