is the duty to make reasonable adjustments reflexive?

Question

If Bob requests a reasonable adjustment from a member of a business’s staff, and they refuse on the grounds that they cannot do such things according to their organisation’s internal logic despite the requirements of the National law without the approval of their organisation’s head office, is this refusal a breach of the requirement of the equality act to grant a reasonable adjustment?

For example (loosely based on a real life scenario): Alice has diabetes a legal disability. She goes to an ice cream stall that runs a promotional deal of £0.99 soft serve cones for the first 99 customers per day, where the soft serve has a low calorie sugar free I option for the ice cream but the cone is covered in sugary chocolate so she wouldn’t be able to have it. She requests to be given the promotional deal with the ice cream in a cup instead of a cone as a reasonable adjustment for her to equally benefit from the promotion after standing in the queue rather than being forced to pay £5 for a non soft serve ice cream.

The server insists that their boss is extremely strict that no modifications can be made to the promotional deal to incentivise people to buy the other products and the promotional item is to be strictly limited to the exact formulation advertised with no modifications or adjustments made.

Alternatively: Barbara uses a wheel chair and bought a ticket to a cinema with a “strict no late admission” policy. The nearest station with step free access had its lift out of order so she found that upon arriving and had to go back on the train to the next step free accessible station causing her to be late. The usher insists that the policy is strict and no exceptions are to be made to it. Barbara cites the EA2010’s requirement to provide her reasonable adjustment. The usher reckons that this legal speak is above his pay grade and ought to be directed to the head office or legal department by which time the film showing will have been long over causing Barbara a wasted journey. Has Barbara been discriminated against by the cinema by an effective refusal to provide reasonable adjustments?

Is it on Bob (not an employee or member of this organisation so presumably unfamiliar with its structure and processes) to obtain contact avenues for the head office in order to submit his request even though he already missed out on its benefit for that day? Or have they now definitely abrogated their duty to make or at least consider requests for reasonable adjustments?

I suppose that underlying this question is some sense of comparison to the data protection act wherein subject access requests may be submitted to (and must be thus accepted and relayed by for appropriate consideration) any member of an organisation with whom one may come into contact.

Answer 1

Lets for the sake of understanding take an example we can talk about. Let's say Bob has problems with his back and needs a desk that he can either sit or stand at.

Every company has procedures. Bob cannot just walk up to a random employee and demand they pull a standing desk out of their pocket like a magician. Referring Bob to the entity in the company that is handling such requests is perfectly normal procedure.

For example, Alice the team lead, when questioned by Bob about his standing desk required as a reasonable ajustment, is well within the law to say "oh, those requests are handled centrally by the head office. I can show you the form on the intranet where you can send your request".

This is not a refusal at all. This is helping Bob to get what he needs.

Answer 2

It's not necessarily unlawful for an employee to have to seek authorisation from senior colleagues to make a decision, to ask senior colleagues to make a decision, or ask other colleagues to make something happen.

Making a reasonable adjustment may be outside the employee's remit or competence. Suppose the reasonable adjustment involves installing a wheelchair ramp or editing a website. With respect to Alice the cashier, Bob the shelf-stacker or Carla the accountant, it's not reasonable to expect them to do that. The law doesn't have the effect of obliging them to do that. The law obliges the organisation to do that.

Making a reasonable adjustment may cost money. Not all employees have access to the company credit card or authorisation to use company funds for purposes outside of their remit.

Making a reasonable adjustment may take significant time and involve some disruption. Not all employees have the authority to make decisions about this.

Not all employees have the authority or competence to decide what is a reasonable adjustment. To make a potentially lawful or unlawful decision, no less. Even senior colleagues may want to ask a lawyer.

The company might have a policy to send a specialist to consult with the person asking for a reasonable adjustment. This could be better for the person than having an employee make that decision regardless of the person.

It may well be lawful for an employee to say, "no, I can't make that happen right now, but I will contact head office about it after our conversation."

It depends.