Timurlenkoglu v Royal Mail Group Ltd [ET 2012]
Mr Timurlenkoglu was employed by Royal Mail in September 2000 as an “indoor mail person”. In December 2006 he suffered a heart attack whilst at work at the Heathrow depot. In 2008 he underwent a double bypass operation and was off work for five months. Royal Mail asked him to see their occupational health provider (ATOS) for a medical examination. ATOS recommended that Mr Timurlenkoglu be transferred somewhere nearer to his home to avoid the stress of driving to Heathrow every day. Accordingly Mr Timurlenkoglu put in a formal request for a transfer, which was supported by his line manager, but no action was taken.
Subsequently Royal Mail asked for medical reports on Mr Timurlenkoglu 15 times during which time he continued to work at Heathrow. In June 2010 he finally brought a claim for disability discrimination alleging direct discrimination, discrimination arising out of disability and a failure to make reasonable adjustments. An employment tribunal upheld his claims and found that his employer had “deliberately kept referring the claimant to ATOS to avoid making any decision” and that it had “failed miserably properly to deal with the claimant’s transfer requests” and had failed to deal with the occupational health advisers’ recommendation that Mr Timurlenkoglu be transferred to another location. The tribunal also found that his formal grievances had not been addressed.
After upholding Mr Timurlenkoglu claims at the initial hearing a date was set for a remedies hearing by which time Royal Mail should have started to implement the reasonable adjustments it had been found liable to make. Unfortunately it had not done so and Mr Timurlenkoglu was still employed at the Heathrow mail centre. The tribunal said “There was a lack of ownership of the problem prior to the main hearing and notwithstanding the tribunal’s judgement, there still appears to be a lack of ownership”.
Accordingly the tribunal awarded Mr Timurlenkoglu a high injury to feelings award of £17,600 to reflect the loss of trust in his employer. It went onto award a further £2,000 in aggravated damages for Royal Mail’s failure to deal with the matter before the remedies hearing and an uplift of the maximum 25% for a failure to deal with his grievances which amounted to £4,900. The tribunal also made the recommendation that “without delay” a senior HR person or senior manager “take ownership of the claimant’s case” i.e. transfer him to a location nearer to his home as recommended by the occupational health advisers at the outset. It also said that senior person was to ensure that Royal Mail complies with its obligations under the Equality Act 2010 to all its disabled employees and in particular Mr Timurlenkoglu.
For more information about please contact our Legal Director, Bela Gor
1
Building disability-smart organisations