Specific things to consider in your failure to make reasonable adjustments claim

Written by Danae Shell | Jul 24, 2025 2:47:33 PM

Laying out your claim

When you are claiming failure to make reasonable adjustments at Tribunal, you want to clearly argue that your employer has failed to make a reasonable change to help you to do your job, or apply for a job, to reduce the impact of your disability. For example:

An employer fails to rearrange the furniture and install a new desk so that an employee who is a wheelchair user is able to effectively negotiate their way around the customer area.
An employer has a policy that designated car parking spaces are only offered to senior managers. A worker who is not a manager, but has a mobility impairment and needs to park very close to the office, asks for a designated car parking space, but this is refused.
An employer fails to allow a person who has become disabled more time off work than would be allowed to non-disabled workers to enable them to have rehabilitation training.

With failure to make reasonable adjustments, your employer can be liable for the acts of its employees, as well as the employees being personally responsible.

Proving your claim

You don’t need to attach evidence to a Tribunal ET1 claim, but it’s a good idea to back up your claims by mentioning the evidence you intend to use. For failure to make reasonable adjustments claims, people typically refer to evidence such as policies such as sickness absence policies, doctor’s notes, Occupational Health reports, text messages, emails, letters, meeting notes and witness evidence.

What you can ask for in your failure to make reasonable adjustments claim

If you’re successful in a Tribunal claim, you will be awarded a “remedy”. This mainly includes financial compensation, like loss of earnings. It can also include some non-financial remedies too.

Common remedies people ask for at Tribunal

Some of the key remedies you can ask for at Tribunal are:

The money you have lost from being out of work, or working in a lower-paid job.
The money that you expect to lose in the future from being out of work, or working in a lower-paid job.
Wages that you are owed, including holiday pay and notice pay.

Discrimination-specific remedies

As well as the common remedies that you can ask for, discrimination-specific claims also have the option to include an “injury to feelings” remedy. This is compensation which you can be awarded when you have been hurt or distressed because you have been discriminated against.

Injury to feelings is generally awarded within one of three “Vento bands” depending on severity.