Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make it her policy to amend the Equality Act 2010 to require employers to make reasonable adjustments for people with a disability visiting a premises for work purposes.

There are two types of reasonable adjustment duty under the Equality Act 2010 (the Act) - the first is the reasonable adjustment duty on employers and the second is the ‘anticipatory’ duty on service providers (that is businesses that provide services to the public or which exercise public functions), which requires such providers to consider reasonable adjustments even before an individual disabled person accesses their services.

The Act requires employers to make reasonable adjustments in relation to the disabled employee’s job. These adjustments ensure that disabled employees are not placed at a substantial disadvantage compared to their non-disabled colleagues. The failure of an employer to make reasonable adjustments for a disabled employee or job seeker, or discounting a job application simply because the applicant is disabled could amount to direct disability discrimination under the Act.

However, the 2010 Act also recognises the need to strike a balance between the needs of disabled employees and the circumstances of their employers. What is ‘reasonable’ will therefore vary from one employer to another because of factors such as the practicality of making the adjustment, the cost of the adjustment to the employer and the resources available to different employers. There are no plans to modify these provisions.