The appellant was a Balfour Beatty contracts manager, one of four in the region where he worked. In July 2009, he was diagnosed with depression. He was signed off work by reason of stress or depression from October 2009 until July 2010, when he began a phased return to work. He also suffered with an appendix problem in the same period, for which he had surgery in March 2010. It was common ground that he would have been absent from work for several weeks because of the problem with his appendix, regardless of his absence due to depression. It was also common ground that his depression constituted a disability.

In September 2010, Balfour Beatty embarked on a programme of reorganisation and decided to reduce its number of contracts managers within the region from four to three. In order to decide who to make redundant, a scoring exercise was carried out. One of the criteria was attendance. The appellant received the lowest overall score in this regard and, as a result, he was selected for redundancy.

The Employment Tribunal had held that B had not discriminated against the appellant allocating his score for attendance. The appellant had contended that by giving him a poor attendance rating, Balfour Beatty had contravened the Equality Act 2010 s.15(1)(a), which provides that a person would discriminate against a disabled person if the former treated the latter unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of his disability. The EAT dismissed the appeal, finding that, when assessing the appellant’s attendance, the employer had taken into account only his absence resulting from the appendix problem. http://bit.ly/13KzbS9