Monitoring the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 - Centre for ...

An applicant who is registered blind was compulsorily
retired from his job as a catering manager on health and
safety and ill-health grounds. He sought representation
from a solicitor but at £150 per hour he could not afford to
continue with legal representation beyond the preliminary
hearings. His union said it could not help him as he already
had legal support from a solicitor. He represented himself at
the last two hearings but saw enormous disadvantages in
doing so. “When you get to the tribunal and there are
professionals there, you do feel an amateur. They [the
respondent] had an employment lawyer who could quote
from the Act on their feet, and I couldn’t have told you what
they were saying.”
5.7.4 The stress of taking the case
Overall, the process that follows the lodging of an IT1 proved
to be very stressful for some applicants. They had
underestimated the time and effort involved in finding
appropriate advice or representation and fulfilling
obligations such as completing the necessary forms,
attending appointments for medical examinations, or
meeting advisers. In retrospect some said that they had not
realised that a case could take such a long time, or that it
would require providing such a level of detailed information.
An applicant in an unsuccessful recruitment case found the
time taken for the case to come to a full hearing very
frustrating. The preliminary hearing was cancelled the day
before it was scheduled and the case took two years to be
concluded. She lost her case and although she had the
option to appeal, she had found the tribunal hearings “very
traumatic” and wanted to ‘shut the door’ on the
proceedings.
Some applicants mentioned fear of the unknown, sleepless
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