Disability Discrimination - Time Limits

Where an employer omits to make a reasonable adjustment for a disabled person, when does limitation start to run? Limitation runs from a deliberate decision not to make an adjustment but when should time start to run where the employer failed to make any decision whatever?

In Matuszowicz v Kingston Upon Hull City Council, the Court of Appeal held that even where the omission was ongoing at the time of the claim but a future adjustment was still possible, the effect of Paragraph 3, schedule 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 was to create an artificial limitation start date. That was the date defined in paragraph 3(4)(b) as when the period expires within which he might reasonably have been expected to do the omitted act if it was to be done.

Where an omission is ongoing at the time of the claim, a Tribunal will have to determine the period during which a reasonable employer, under a duty to make an adjustment and intending to make it, would make the adjustment. Limitation starts to run when that period expires. Paragraph 3(4)(b) is not restricted to deliberate omissions.

[Thanks to Anthony Cutler, pupil barrister at 1 Temple Gardens, for summarising this case, and to Nick Siddall of Kings Chambers, who represented the Respondent, for telling me about it]