What equality law means - Birmingham Disability Resource Centre

Dealing with the complaint
If the complaint is about the way you or your organisation does something, think about
getting it changed.
Make sure you tell the job applicant what the result of their complaint is, otherwise they
may bring an Employment Tribunal claim.
What you can do if you find that there has been
unlawful discrimination
The action you take will depend on the specific details of the case and its seriousness.
You should take into consideration any underlying circumstances and the outcome of
previous similar cases. Actions you take could be:
• Equality training for the person who discriminated.
• Appropriate disciplinary action (you can find out more about disciplinary procedures
from Acas) against the person who discriminated.
Monitoring the outcome
Whether you decide that there had been unlawful discrimination or not, make sure that
you do not treat the person who complained badly. For example, making sure the person
is not shortlisted on any future job applications would amount to victimisation.
If the job applicant is not satisfied with what has happened, they may decide to bring a
claim in the Employment Tribunal.
The questions procedure
If a job applicant thinks they may have been unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or
victimised against equality law, then they can obtain information from you to help them
decide if they have a valid claim or not.
There is a set form to help them do this which you can access at:
http://www.equalities.gov.uk/news/equality_act_2010_forms_for_ob.aspx,
but their questions will still count even if they do not use the form, so long as they use the
same questions. The form is sometimes called a ‘questionnaire’.
If you receive questions from a job applicant, you are not legally required to reply to the
request, or to answer the questions, but it may harm your case if you do not.
The questions and the answers can form part of the evidence in a case brought under the
Equality Act 2010.
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