Bryce v Coventry City Council: EAT orders fresh hearing on interviewer's view of stress

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has ordered a fresh hearing of a job applicant's discrimination arising from disability claim, after finding that a tribunal wrongly relied on an interviewer's view that he did not appear stressed.

In Bryce v Coventry City Council [2026] EAT 153, Her Honour Judge Joffe upheld the dismissal of the reasonable adjustments claim but allowed the appeal on section 15 of the Equality Act 2010.

R Bryce applied for a team manager role in the council's revenue services. He is autistic and has dyslexia. Adjustments included prompting or rephrasing of questions and sight of the seven interview questions beforehand, which arrived 24 minutes before the interview rather than the 20 he had requested. He scored lowest of eight candidates, and an employment tribunal dismissed his claims in October 2023.

Reasonable adjustments

The pleaded practice was giving candidates limited time to provide examples of how they met the job criteria. Mr Bryce said the council should have asked closed rather than open questions. The tribunal held that adjustment was not connected to the disadvantage and, alternatively, that it had been made, while his version of asking only yes or no questions was unreasonable.

The judge held the first finding was wrong, because the nature of a question can plainly affect how quickly it is answered. She also said the tribunal was mistaken to treat the council as entitled to take the claimant's requested adjustments at face value, citing Project Management Ltd v Latif. Knowledge of a disadvantage derived from a requested adjustment does not necessarily confine the duty to that adjustment, she said.

The error made no difference. The tribunal was entitled to use National Autistic Society guidance to define closed questions and to find that the questions asked complied with it. Yes or no questions would not have let candidates show competence and would over-correct for a disadvantage concerning speed, not any inability to give examples. Adjustments that strip an assessment method of its efficacy cannot be reasonable, the judge said.

Discrimination arising from disability

The tribunal accepted that stress in new situations such as interviews arose from disability, but found Mr Bryce had not in fact been stressed. It relied on an interviewer's view that he seemed confident, partly because he declined to share his screen when asked, on the reasoning that a stressed person might have complied.

Judge Joffe held that this rested on assumptions about how neurotypical people behave. The interviewer was not an expert on the claimant's conditions, and the tribunal preferred his impression to the claimant's own evidence without asking whether stress would present in the same way. Alternatively, the reasons were ambiguous and inadequate.

Mr Bryce could not advance a new case that he was rejected because of an inability to give examples of skills such as communication and empathy. That was not among the "somethings" identified below, and the judge declined to strain the list of issues so as to ambush the council.

The section 15 claim goes to a new tribunal to be heard afresh, including whether stress materially contributed to the decision and, if so, whether it was justified. The judge cited the passage of time and flaws in the reasoning, applying Sinclair Roche & Temperley v Heard, and noted that mixing findings of fact with statements of law made the reasons harder to analyse.

Mr Bryce appeared in person. A Leonhardt appeared for the council.