Legal Question

“My name is Brooklyn, I am 14 and in Year 10. I attend my local mainstream school and use a powered wheelchair and eye gaze device for communication, as well as to control my wheelchair. I was looking forward to pursuing my dreams of becoming an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engineer, so I was excited to recently secure a work experience placement in this area, as part of my coursework.

I have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) that includes funding from health and social services, and a dedicated team of personal assistants (PAs), both at school and outside.

A month before the placement began, the company withdrew their offer, stating my presence would impact team productivity, take up too much office space, and compromise the security of their information due to the PAs. They also refused to allow my mobile hoist on-site, claiming it would be a safety hazard. The company made these justifications even though they were aware of my requirements. The late withdrawal of the placement has left my school with insufficient time to secure an alternative opportunity, and they are not in a position to provide an internal work experience placement.”

There are duties under the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) to ensure that Disabled people do not suffer discrimination. Disability is a ‘protected characteristic’ under the EA 2010. The company would appear to be acting in a discriminatory way.

There are a number of potential ways in which the company is discriminating. Even if you could not prove that there was direct discrimination, there would appear to be strong other grounds to argue that they are acting contrary to the Equality Act.  We set out some of the ways in which there may be discrimination below.

Direct discrimination- Being treated less favourably than others because of your impairment

Any 14-year-old attending an office for work experience is likely to some degree to impact on team productivity.  The fact that they are raising concerns because of your impairment (as opposed to your age) points towards there being direct discrimination, particularly if they have previously provided work experience opportunities to non-Disabled children.  Similarly, the idea that you would ‘take up too much office space’ is also unlikely to be accepted as an excuse given that work experience was offered in the first place. If there is a genuine issue relating to space (which is doubtful) they would need to show that and no doubt appropriate reasonable adjustments could be made (e.g. rearranging desks/ potentially asking a member of staff to work remotely for a few days)

Failure to make reasonable adjustments

The failure to allow a mobile hoist is very likely to be considered a failure to make a reasonable adjustment – there is no obvious reason why it should be a safety hazard, and the question obviously arises as to what they would intend to do if they had a regular employee with your condition. An obvious reasonable adjustment in terms of security concerns about the PA is to get them to sign whatever confidentiality documents you were required to sign.

There may also be other ways of arguing that there was discrimination as well e.g. discrimination arising from your impairment,  your need for a hoist/ PA/ more space arises as a consequence of your impairment, and the company is likely to find it hard to show that refusing to allow you to attend is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim where there would appear to be less discriminatory routes open to them as set out above.

Practical next steps

I would very much hope that a well worded letter from the school to the company raising concerns about potential disability discrimination would be enough to get the company to change their position.  I would be very surprised if they did not back down. In theory if that did not work and there was still time a letter before action from a solicitor may persuade them to change their mind, if that was a route you wished to go down.

There would be the potential for a disability discrimination claim in the County Court if attempts to get them to change their position were unsuccessful, but I would hope that matters would not get that far.