Hi Nutter 192. Sorry to hear about the difficulties that you are experiencing in the workplace. The comments made by the CAG members to date appear to be credible and will doubtless be of assistance. I act in a voluntary capacity routinely assisting disabled employees to enforce their rights in the workplace in respect of the Equality Act and formerly the DDA. If I may please allow me to supplement the comments made by other doubtless learned members. Firstly, it appears that you made your employer aware of your physical impairment. It is, however, not the employee's duty to advise your employer that you are disabled - a point that is often misunderstood. It is for the employer to determine if it may be appropriate to make reasonable adjustments in order to ensure that you are not treated less favourably than other (non disabled) employees. As opposed to cherry picking pro bono advice on the forum I would recommend that you contact a free and highly authoritative helpline at the EHRC (formerly the Disability Rights Commission) . Their contact # is on the EHRC website. Their employment specialists will give you expert guidance free of charge. Sadly, they will stop short of advising you. However, if you wish to post a draft letter/ grievance to send to your employer then I (and presumably other members) would be glad to review it. Do you even know what constitutes a grievance ; does your employer have a grievance procedure ? If not, go on to the ACAS website and they have an excellent section on grievances. ACAS also have a free helpline, but their knowledge of the Equality Act is patchy at best. As for taking on a solicitor I would have no concerns whatsoever. Many solicitors and in particular those who are employers tend to have little, if any, appreciation of the rights of disabled members of staff. If your employer really intends to discriminate against you then sadly they probably will. But ultimately they may have to face the consequences. In employment tribunals an employer's failure to make reasonable adjustments rarely leads to significant compensatory awards, typically in the region of £3-4K, BUT if as appears to be the case you may be being subjected to direct disability discrimination then awards can be significantly higher. For example in a recent tribunal case I assisted a disabled friend and she was awarded £65K. Although it is highly improbable does by any chance your employer have a Disability Discrimination/ Equality Procedure !?

Having looked at deadlines for submission of an ET1 claim form to the Tribunal there may be a parallel with the posted query. A claim must be submitted within 3 months. But that is defined as three months less one day. Surely then one years service must be one year less one day. If for example one was a nurse and your first day of employment was January 1 and their effective date of terimination was December 31st then surely that time period represents one year ??? Along similar lines then I would hope that in law the period from March 1 to Feb 28 also represents one year ( excluding leap years of course !) .

Regardless, looks like a fairly intriguing query and look forward to replies from learned forum members.