By Rebecca Durkin, Lawyer
Background
Mr Dean Bean had worked as a Civil Enforcement Officer since 2007. His employment transferred to NSL Limited under TUPE in 2017 when the company took over parking enforcement services for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
Mr Bean has severe dyslexia, a fact known to NSL throughout his employment.
Civil Enforcement Officers are required to use handheld devices in which they manually log the locations they have visited. The devices also record live GPS location data.
In April 2019, NSL accused Mr Bean of "ghost logging" after concluding that GPS data from his handheld device showed he had remained in a coach park while manually recording that he was carrying out patrols elsewhere. Mr Bean maintained that he had completed the patrol and argued that the handheld device was unreliable, noting that it had crashed several times that day.
During the subsequent investigation and disciplinary process, Mr Bean raised a grievance about the way the proceedings were conducted. He said the allegations were unclear and the GPS evidence was difficult to understand. At the end of the investigation meetings, Mr Bean had been expected to sign handwritten notes which, because of his dyslexia, he could not properly read or comprehend. He also complained that he had not been permitted appropriate support from a companion familiar with his disability. NSL ultimately dismissed him for gross misconduct in June 2019.
Mr Bean brought claims for unfair dismissal, indirect disability discrimination, failure to make reasonable adjustments, disability-related harassment, discrimination arising from disability and wrongful dismissal. The Employment Tribunal found that he had been unfairly dismissed and upheld his claims for indirect discrimination, failure to make reasonable adjustments and harassment. However, it also found that he had committed the misconduct alleged and reduced his compensatory award for unfair dismissal by 100%. NSL appealed.
Outcome
The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) delivered a mixed decision. It upheld the tribunal's finding that Mr Bean had been unfairly dismissed. The EAT accepted that the disciplinary allegations and technical GPS evidence had not been presented in a sufficiently clear or comprehensible way, particularly given Mr Bean's dyslexia. The tribunal had been entitled to conclude that these shortcomings rendered the dismissal unfair, despite the subsequent appeal process.
The EAT also upheld the tribunal's conclusion that NSL failed to make reasonable adjustments. It agreed that expecting Mr Bean to sign handwritten investigation notes that he could not read placed him at a substantial disadvantage because of his dyslexia. Allowing him to take the notes away for review and support before signing them was a reasonable step that could have been taken.
However, the EAT allowed the appeal in relation to the findings of indirect disability discrimination. It found that the tribunal had failed to properly consider group disadvantage, having not analysed whether disabled employees generally would suffer the same disadvantage as Mr Bean.
The EAT also allowed NSL's appeal against the harassment findings. The tribunal had concluded that insisting that Mr Bean sign the notes at the end of the meetings had amounted to harassment, as had a comment in the outcome of Mr Bean’s grievance which stated the relevant notes were “very short”. The EAT held that the tribunal had not adequately explained how this conduct was related to his disability or how the statutory test for harassment had been satisfied.
The EAT upheld the tribunal's decision not to reduce the basic award for unfair dismissal despite finding that Mr Bean had committed misconduct. It confirmed that the tribunal had been entitled to conclude that the employer's procedural failings justified preserving the basic award, while reducing compensation to reflect the inevitability of dismissal. The appeal was therefore dismissed on unfair dismissal and reasonable adjustments, but allowed in relation to indirect discrimination and harassment. Further submissions on disposal were ordered.
Comments / Key takeaways
This judgment is a useful reminder that employers must consider how disciplinary and investigation procedures operate in practice for disabled workers, particularly those with conditions affecting literacy, communication or information processing. Simply applying standard procedures may not be enough where those procedures place a disabled employee at a substantial disadvantage.
The EAT reinforced the principle that reasonable adjustments extend beyond day-to-day duties and can apply equally to disciplinary and grievance processes. It is not the employee’s responsibility to identify adjustments to these processes: employers who are aware of an employee’s disability should actively consider whether adjustments may be required. In this case, allowing the notes to be taken away and ensuring the employee was adequately supported in meetings were practicable adjustments which should have been considered.
The decision also highlights that there does not have to be a strict separation between substantive and procedural unfairness when it comes to unfair dismissal claims. A Tribunal should consider the fairness of a dismissal as a whole, and the EAT made it clear that procedural unfairness can impact on the fairness of the substantive decision.
For trade unions and workplace representatives, the case underlines the importance of challenging inaccessible disciplinary procedures and ensuring that employers properly accommodate workers with disabilities throughout formal workplace processes. It also serves as a reminder that an employee may succeed in an unfair dismissal claim because of serious procedural failings, even where the tribunal concludes that the underlying misconduct occurred and dismissal would ultimately have been inevitable, although this will be reflected in the compensation awarded.
NSL Limited v Mr Dean Bean [2026] EAT 132