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disability at work act protection

NAS65321

Hi I realised I was autistic about 2 years ago and have been on the NHS waiting list for 20 months. Work wise I have always done jobs within my comfort zone and never pushed myself. Have been with the company for 12 years and work as a IT repair engineer going to customers sites fixing printers and PC's, and some time working from home. I had a big meltdown last year when my dad died and had to put my mum into care but I was on furlough so I got throught it without work being affected. Since then work has been slow but is now ramping up again.

I now have a new line mamanger and department manager. The new department manager wants us to take on news things and merge engineers into one team. My team has shrunk from 15 to 3 over last 10 years and are the smallest of the teams and do a very diffrent job to them. The thought of being asked to learn lots of new stuff I have no interest in is stressing me out. I get on very well with my new line manager and confided in her last week about my autism and asked that I be left to just do my job and not be expected to learn too many other things and she was sympathetic. I was going to tell work oficially when I get my full diagnosis, but can i do it before then? How does it work under disability rights act, do a i need a bit of paper to say I am autistic to get help from this? Is being disgnosed by my GP enough? I have also been treated for depression for 10 years. Any ideas?

thanks

Rob

Parents

  • The relevant act of parliament is the equality act 2010. Technically no you don’t need a peice of paper saying you have autism to be covered by the act. But if it came to an employment tribunal then you might find it hard to win your case with out getting diagnosed at that point. It’s still not an absolute requirement though.

    the act defines disability in section 6 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/6. "A person (P) has a disability if P has a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on P's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.”

    if you can persuade the tribunal you have a mental impairment that substantially (more than a minor or trivial) effects your ability to do normal day to day activities then that’s a disability. (Long term is generally more than 12 months but autism is life long so)

    obviously that’s a lot easier with an autism diagnosis.

    now what you might want to consider is section 20 to 21 of the act that says "The first requirement is a requirement, where a provision, criterion or practice of A's puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage in relation to a relevant matter in comparison with persons who are not disabled, to take such steps as it is reasonable to have to take to avoid the disadvantage.”

    So questions you need to ask are:

    • Does asking you to take on new duties amount to a provision criteria or practice (for now I’ll assume it does)
    • does it put you at a (more than minor or trivial) disadvantage compared to your non autistic colleagues? After all they will have to learn new things too. Will autism make it harder for you than them?
    • what steps should they take to fix this? (I’m going to assume you want to be excused from the new duties)
    • how reasonable are those steps? Is it really going to cause them much trouble to ask the rest of the team to handle the new duties without you.

    I want to emphasise this is not legal advice but you might like to think about this and do some research before you talk to them next.

  • in reply to Peter

    Just to be clear you should also read scedual 8 of the act which say "A is not subject to a duty to make reasonable adjustments if A does not know, and could not reasonably be expected to know <snip> that an interested disabled person has a disability and is likely to be placed at the disadvantage referred to in the first, second or third requirement."

    so the question is if you tell them you are waiting for an autism diagnosis should they be reasonably expected to know you have autism?

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  • in reply to Peter

    Just to be clear you should also read scedual 8 of the act which say "A is not subject to a duty to make reasonable adjustments if A does not know, and could not reasonably be expected to know <snip> that an interested disabled person has a disability and is likely to be placed at the disadvantage referred to in the first, second or third requirement."

    so the question is if you tell them you are waiting for an autism diagnosis should they be reasonably expected to know you have autism?

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