Equality on the Bus: Case Comment on Paulley v FirstGroup Plc

Abstract

The Equality Act 2010 imposes a duty on employers and organisations to make sure that disabled people have easy access to education, jobs and services. This ensures that they are treated equally with non-disabled people. Over the years, employers have been looked down upon for failing to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people by both the EHRC and judges. There seems to be much more focus on how and why employers should treat disabled people equally, leaving organisations and service providers behind. As a result, there has not been much deliberation on how far service providers should go when making reasonable adjustments for disabled people. Paulley v FirstGroup Plc is the first case of its kind to discuss the duty upon service providers to make reasonable adjustments to their services for disabled people. It has therefore been quite a contentious case, attracting mixed opinions from academics and disability and equality supporters. This article sets out the key facts of the case, followed by the judge’s reasoning, judgment and analysis. Essentially, the main question the decision in this case raises is whether it has struck a balance between disabled people’s rights to freedom from discrimination and the reasonable adjustments that service providers are required to make.

Keywords

service providers, reasonable adjustments, freedom, disability, FirstBus, Paulley, Discrimination

How to Cite

Tariq, A., (2018) “Equality on the Bus: Case Comment on Paulley v FirstGroup Plc”, Fields: journal of Huddersfield student research 4(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.5920/fields.2018.06

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Authors

Akeel Tariq

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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Peer Review

This article has been peer reviewed.

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