An NHS receptionist who lost her job after telling her employer she was scared of working in a public-facing role has been awarded £56,000 for unfair dismissal.
Mrs D’Silva worked at the chest clinic at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust. Following a lengthy period of sick leave, she returned to work in 2017 to find that a restructure had taken place and her administrative role now encompassed reception work.
The claimant, who was disabled because of her stress and anxiety, repeatedly told her manager that she found working on the reception desk stressful. On a number of occasions she said that she would be happy to do back office work and felt there were roles in the trust that offered this.
Unfair dismissal
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An occupational health (OH) assessment found that she was fit to work in the role she had been allocated, but not on the front desk as it was felt she did not have the necessary functional resilience for this. She was later told this would be a temporary arrangement until she was fit to do reception work.
She went off sick after being admitted to A&E with chest pains and stress later that year.
In a sickness absence review meeting in January 2018, D’Silva was told that a back office role for her was unsustainable as all of her colleagues were covering for her on reception. However, at that point a member of staff had been appointed to cover reception.
She tried to apply for other NHS roles, but found nothing suitable. The Trust also suggested roles it felt was suitable for her, but the claimant felt she could not do any of them and did not put in any applications for redeployment.
OH reported that D’Silva wanted to return to work after being signed off sick but was “petrified” of having to deal with patients. The OH doctor later diagnosed her anxiety about working with patients as “public phobia”.
The trust felt the temporary adjustments made to the claimant’s role in 2017, including making it non-patient facing, could not continue indefinitely as they had a serious impact on the rest of the team and service delivery.
She was dismissed on grounds of capability due to ill health in January 2019.
Tribunal judge Anna Corrigan concluded that the trust had made no effort to find D’Silva an alternative role once the extent of her health condition became known, and simply left her to look through vacancies herself.
The judgment says: “The duty to make reasonable adjustments is on the respondent not the claimant.
“Leaving it to the employee to find an alternative role might successfully lead to an adjustment being made in some cases but the approach adopted by the respondent to leave all the effort to the claimant, and indeed the only slightly better ‘light touch’ approach in the policy, runs the risk that, like here, there are a number of suitable roles that would be reasonable adjustments but an adjustment is nevertheless not made.”
The judge also found that D’Silva’s past absences were held against her when the employer decided to dismiss her.
“If a fair procedure had been followed and reasonable consideration been given to redeployment then the likelihood is the claimant would have remained at work in a suitable vacancy,” the judgment says.
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D’Silva was awarded a total of £56,684.73, including a £24,000 award for injury to feelings. Claims of disability-related harassment and victimisation were dismissed.
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