A Refusal Is Not the End -- It Is the Beginning of Your Claim
When an employer refuses to make reasonable adjustments, they are not simply being difficult -- they may be breaching a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010. That breach is the foundation of a discrimination claim. The refusal, and everything that follows from it, becomes evidence. What you do in the days and weeks after a refusal determines how strong that evidence is.
Step One: Get the Refusal in Writing
If your employer has refused your request verbally, follow up immediately in writing. Email HR or your manager and state: "I am writing to confirm our conversation on [date] in which I requested [specific adjustment] as a reasonable adjustment for my disability. I understand from that conversation that this request has been refused. Please confirm this in writing and provide the reasons for the refusal." Keep a copy of the email and any response. A refusal in writing is clear evidence. A verbal refusal that is never confirmed is harder to rely on but still usable -- your contemporaneous note of what was said is evidence.
Step Two: Assess Whether the Refusal Is Lawful
Not every refusal is unlawful. The duty is to make adjustments that are reasonable. Reasonableness takes account of: the cost of the adjustment, the disruption it would cause, whether it would actually be effective, the employer's resources, and the availability of external support such as Access to Work funding. An employer who refuses an adjustment that costs nothing and would take five minutes to implement has almost no defensible position. An employer who refuses an expensive structural change to premises on cost grounds may have a stronger argument -- though they should still have considered whether alternative adjustments might achieve the same result.
The most common unlawfully refused adjustments include: extended deadlines, flexible start and finish times, written instructions, a dedicated workspace, noise-cancelling equipment, additional rest breaks, phased returns from sickness absence, remote working where the role allows it, and modified performance targets during periods of ill health. If your requested adjustment falls into any of these categories and the employer has refused without specific justification, the refusal is likely to be unlawful.
Step Three: Raise a Formal Grievance
Raise a formal grievance in writing. State that you are disabled within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, that you requested a specific reasonable adjustment, that the request was refused, and that you consider this refusal to be a breach of the employer's duty under section 20 of the Equality Act 2010. Be specific: name the adjustment, the date you requested it, who you spoke to, and the response you received. Ask the grievance to be heard by someone senior who was not involved in the original refusal. Keep a copy of the grievance letter and every response to it.
Raising a grievance is important for two reasons. First, it gives the employer an opportunity to reconsider -- sometimes a formal grievance triggers a proper assessment that the initial refusal did not. Second, it creates the paper trail that a tribunal will want to see. A tribunal looking at a failure to adjust claim will ask whether the employee gave the employer every reasonable opportunity to comply before bringing proceedings. A grievance demonstrates that you did.
Step Four: Request Occupational Health Input
If the employer has not referred you to occupational health, request it formally in writing. An occupational health assessment can establish the medical basis for the adjustment you are requesting and make specific recommendations to the employer. Employers find it much harder to refuse adjustments that an occupational health professional has specifically recommended -- the "we did not know it was necessary" argument disappears, and the "it is not reasonable" argument becomes harder to sustain when a qualified professional says it is.
If the employer refuses to refer you to occupational health, note the refusal in writing. The refusal is itself potentially relevant evidence of the employer's approach to their adjustment duty.
Step Five: Consider Access to Work
Access to Work is a government scheme that provides funding for adjustments that support disabled people in employment. It can fund specialist equipment, support workers, travel costs, and workplace adaptations. The existence of Access to Work funding can demolish the cost objection to an adjustment -- if the government will pay for it, the employer cannot reasonably refuse on grounds of expense. Apply at gov.uk/access-to-work and notify your employer of the application. If Access to Work funding is available for your requested adjustment and the employer still refuses, that refusal is very difficult to justify.
Step Six: Contact ACAS and Consider Your Claim
If the grievance has not resolved the issue, contact ACAS at acas.org.uk and start early conciliation. Your time limit for a disability discrimination claim is three months less one day from the act of discrimination -- which in a failure to adjust case is typically the date of the refusal, or the last date on which the employer failed to comply with the duty. Do not miss this deadline. The ACAS early conciliation process pauses it.
A failure to make reasonable adjustments claim does not require you to have been dismissed. You can bring it while still employed. You can also combine it with other discrimination claims -- discrimination arising from disability, direct discrimination, or harassment -- in the same proceedings. If you have subsequently been dismissed, add an unfair dismissal or automatic unfair dismissal claim to the same ET1.
The Compensation Available
Compensation for disability discrimination is uncapped. It covers injury to feelings, financial loss attributable to the discrimination, and personal injury where the discrimination caused psychiatric harm. Awards for injury to feelings are assessed on the Vento scale -- lower band £1,100 to £11,200 for less serious cases, middle band £11,200 to £33,700 for more serious cases, and upper band £33,700 to £56,200 for the most serious cases. These bands are reviewed annually. Where psychiatric injury has been caused, the medical evidence supports a separate personal injury element. Where the employer acted in a particularly high-handed or malicious way, aggravated damages are also available.