The Land Registry introduced a discretionary bonus scheme that paid an annual bonus for good attendance. Workers who had received a formal warning for their attendance during the relevant year were not eligible for the bonus. There was no exception for disabled workers, even in relation to disability-related absence. This, ruled the EAT, was unfavourable treatment because of something arising in consequence of a person’s disability. It could not be justified and was a breach of section 15 of the Equality Act 2010 (see page 165). In particular, under the terms of the scheme managers were given no discretion, once a warning had been issued, whether to withhold the bonus from disabled workers. In addition, the procedure was flawed because it failed to take into account improvements by employees to their attendance after getting the warning but before losing the bonus, even though the purpose of the scheme was to promote good attendance.

Land Registry v Houghton [2015] UKEAT/0149/14/BA

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