MOT tester with cerebral palsy wins discrimination claim

Paul Withers was branded ‘lazy' by his manager at Halfords Autocentre in Milton Keynes

MOT tester with cerebral palsy wins discrimination claim
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A car mechanic with cerebral palsy has won a discrimination claim after he was labelled ‘lazy’ by his boss at Halfords.

Paul Withers told an employment tribunal in Bury St Edmunds that he disclosed his condition during an interview for an MOT tester role in October 2019. He told the interviewer that he might struggle with some duties, such as changing tyres.

Having secured the job, Mr Withers started work at Halfords Autocentre in Milton Keynes, primarily to carry out MOT tests, but also to help out as a service technician if there were no tests to complete.

After four months, as a direct consequence of his condition, Mr Withers’ hip became inflamed, and his ankle bones starting rubbing, making it painful for him to weight-bear, so he started to use a clutch.

It was a while before anyone at Halfords carried out a risk assessment to assess the potential hazards for someone using a clutch. As a result of the pain, Mr Withers took several days off sick; and he then took further time off to attend medical appointments.

When he retuned to work, Mr Withers was handed a ‘letter of improvement’. He told the court: “When Stuart George [branch manager] gave me the letter of improvement, he made it sound like if I had one more time off they would look at getting rid of me. The way I was spoken to about it made me think that it was part of a disciplinary.”

The company conducted the first risk assessment in November 2020, but the court heard that “at this point the only adjustments that had been implemented in order to mitigate the claimant’s disability were improvised and at best sporadically employed.”

In order to limit the time that he spent standing still, which caused him pain, Mr Withers had taken it upon himself to take a stool from the tea-room which he used at his MOT desk. Halfords failed to source a suitable chair because Gary Hall [regional general manager] “simply forgot to order” one.

The chair arrived four months later, but only after Mr Withers sent a text reminder. The chair helped, but Mr Withers reported that he was having difficulty in carrying out MOTs on sports cars (too low) and Class 7 commercial vehicles (due to the step up to the cab).

Divisional director Paul Senior invited Mr Withers to a grievance meeting in August 2021. Mr Senior asked: “So can you do the role, Paul?”, to which he replied: “Yes, I can’t get my legs under the car but once the vehicle is on the ramp then yes I can do it.”

The tribunal said this question was “crass and insensitive”.

Mr Hall was interviewed as part of the tribunal and said: “He [Mr Withers] always wants others to do his work” and “I think some of the pushback is from the centre because they believe he is lazy. His condition seems to have got worse; he doesn’t want to do Class 7 which is really annoying for the other colleagues”.

In response, the tribunal said: “We do not accept Mr Senior’s categorisation of these comments as merely being an attempt by Mr Hall to articulate the feelings of other members of staff.

We find them to be quite revealing in relation to Mr Hall’s attitude generally towards the claimant. Even if we were to adopt Mr Senior’s more generous interpretation, we could not ignore the fact that management should have been taking steps to educate other staff in how they should interact with colleagues with disabilities and not, as occurred here, seek to justify the grumblings of discontented colleagues.”

Mr Withers resigned in November 2021, citing constructive dismissal on disability grounds.

Employment judge Richard Conley said: “As stated in our findings of fact, there was at best partial compliance, and such compliance as there was took far too long to be put in place – the chair being a prime example – by which time the claimant had endured considerable pain, and very likely had exacerbated his condition unnecessarily.

“In addition he had undergone the stress and anxiety of worrying about the adequacy of his work and the security of his job.

“There is evidence from a number of sources that where there was a tension between the requirement to make reasonable adjustments and the desire to placate disgruntled staff who perhaps felt that they were having to pick up the claimant’s slack.

“Priority appears to have been given to the interests of other colleagues, presumably as a result of the ‘pushback’ that they were giving, rather than to support a disabled employee who was plainly in need of support.

”The aims of management at first appeared to have been supportive but unfortunately this has given way to a concern about the perception of junior colleagues at the centre and to placing an emphasis on matters of performance that could have been managed more effectively.”

Mr Withers won his discrimination claim, but other claims of harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal were dismissed.

Click here to read the full details of the case.

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