In Bari v Richmond and Wandsworth Councils [2025] EAT 54 the Employment Appeal Tribunal has held that an employment tribunal did not take a sufficiently principled and reasoned approach when considering and deciding a claimant’s application for the provision of information.
Mr Bari who is disabled by reason of arthritis brought claims under the Equality Act 2010.
During tribunal proceedings, Mr Bari emailed the Councils requesting answers to eight detailed questions regarding disabled employees and adjustments made for them. Many of the questions had numerous sub-sections. The Councils were not minded to respond to the questions meaning that Mr Bari had to apply to the tribunal for an order requiring the provision of the requested information. In making the application for the information Mr Bari stated that this information would assist the tribunal. He subsequently wrote that he was applying for an order for specific disclosure or inspection, although he did not request sight of any particular documents. His application was refused on the basis that it was unclear how the information would assist the tribunal. Mr Bari appealed.
The EAT considered the relevant authorities. The core test is whether disclosure is necessary for fairly disposing of the proceedings. The relevance test is a facet of that test and a logical starting place when considering an application. A tribunal must consider relevance in the sense of something being likely to assist or detract from either party’s case, or an issue in the case. A request for information or answers to questions is conceptually distinct from a request for disclosure of documents. Recent authorities such as Essex County Council v Jarrett [2015] UKEAT/0087/15 have confirmed that tribunals can order the provision of information not just the disclosure of documents.
When considering an application for information a tribunal must take a principled and reasoned approach in the same way as it would for an application for disclosure of documents. When a claimant’s request concerns “pure information”, rather than disclosure of an existing document, the task involved in complying with any order may be practically very different (for example, considerable work may be needed to collate the information) and tribunals can assess the impact on the respondent of providing the information.
The EAT held that in Mr Bari’s case, the tribunal had erred in adopting the âwill the disclosure assist the tribunalâ approach rather than providing a sufficiently reasoned decision.
When making an application for information or specific disclosure it pays for a claimant to demonstrate to the tribunal that efforts have been made to secure responses/documents prior to bothering the tribunal with this issue and to demonstrate that the claim cannot fairly be disposed of without this information or any documents being provided. Claimants still have the option where information or documents are not provided to invite the tribunal at full hearing to draw adverse inferences from the lack of provision of the information or documents. Does the unwillingness of the respondent to engage hide something that the tribunal would be interested to know?
