Reasonableness Of Adjustments

Cordell v Foreign and Commonwealth Office UKEAT/0016/11/SM

This case involved a profoundly deaf employee posted to work in Poland. The employer had provided the employee with lip-speaker support at an annual cost of roughly £146,000. Ms Cordell later accepted a promotion to a new post in Kazakhstan, but the employer retracted the offer on the basis that the annual adjustment cost in the new post would increase to £249,500, which it considered to be unreasonable.

Ms Cordell argued that the employer had failed to make a reasonable adjustment in respect of her promotion to the Kazakhstan post. She referred to the cost of support offered by the employer to employees with large families who were posted abroad and argued that this could equal or exceed the cost of adjustments in her case.