Agreeing to a reasonable adjustment isn’t the same as making it happen.

The situation

A fire safety officer working for a regional fire and rescue authority had a history of depression and anxiety, and her employer had accepted she was disabled since February 2023. She raised a bullyingRepeated, unreasonable behaviour towards you at work that undermines you or damages your dignity, such as persistent criticism, exclusion, humiliation, or intimidation. Bullying on its own is not auto... complaint about a colleague in September 2022, and said her employer never properly dealt with it. Occupational healthAn independent medical service that employers use to assess how a health condition is affecting your ability to work. A referral to occupational health is not a step toward dismissal, but the report p... recommended shorter meetings, fewer calls, and funded private counselling, but her employer agreed to all three without carrying them out in time, and later referred her to occupational health more slowly than its own policy required. She resigned in November 2023.

What the tribunal found

The tribunal upheld her claims of disability discrimination, harassment related to disability, victimisation, and part of a sex discrimination claim linked to the delayed occupational health referral. The tribunal also identified six separate failures to make reasonable adjustmentsChanges an employer must make under the Equality Act 2010 for a disabled employee, where without them the employee would be at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled colleagues. What coun..., including failing to keep meetings and calls to a reasonable length and frequency, failing to pay for counselling, and failing to act on the bullying complaint and the OH recommendations promptly. Her resignation amounted to a constructive dismissal under s.95(1)(c) Employment Rights Act 1996The primary piece of legislation setting out employees rights in the UK, including the right not to be unfairly dismissed, the right to a written statement of employment particulars, and rights relati..., since the accumulated failures had gone to the heart of the employment relationship. The tribunal found that the dismissal itself was also an act of discrimination.

Agreeing an adjustment is only half the job. Whether it came through occupational health or was agreed directly with you, and whatever form it took, shorter meetings, fewer check-in calls, funded counselling, your employer still has to make it happen, and do so within a reasonable time. If months pass and nothing changes, that delay is a breach in its own right, regardless of the health condition behind it.

The same goes for a bullying complaint. Telling a manager you are being bullied, even informally, starts an obligation on your employer to look into it and respond. If it goes nowhere and you are left carrying the situation alone, that silence can become part of a much bigger picture, exactly like this case, where enough individual failures added up to a breach serious enough to justify resigning.

If you are in a similar position, put your concerns and any promised adjustment in writing, and keep a note of when it was agreed and whether it actually happened. If your employer has stopped meeting its own commitments to you, on adjustments, a bullying complaint, or anything else connected to your health, get advice before you resign. Whether a resignation counts as a dismissal depends on specific legal tests, and getting the timing and the reasons right matters more than most people expect.

For the legal test behind this duty, see our guide on the duty to make reasonable adjustments. The same gap between agreeing an adjustment and actually making it happen came up in another case we have covered.