Mr Williams was employed by Swansea University. He suffered from a range of health problems which resulted in him dropping to part time hours. He requested reduced hours, before having to take ill-health retirement.
His pension scheme allowed Mr Williams to receive pension payments and an enhancement from the date of retirement based on their final salary at retirement. Those who retired for reasons other than ill-health would have to wait until their normal retirement age before receiving benefits, and would not receive the enhancement.
In Mr Williams' case, his pension was calculated by reference to the part time salary he was being paid at the date of retirement as opposed to his original, full time hours.
In the Employment Tribunal (ET), Mr Williams' originally argued that it would have been a reasonable adjustment to calculate his pension benefits on the basis of a full time equivalent salary but with a reduction in pensionable service to take account of the period of part time working. As this would have made no difference to the result (given the way the benefits are calculated under the pension scheme), Mr Williams withdrew this claim and instead argued that the calculation amounted to discrimination arising from disability.
The ET upheld Mr Williams' claim but this was overturned by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT).
For an analysis of the definition of discrimination arising from disability and the outcome at ET and EAT level, please see our previous case report.
The Court of Appeal has now upheld the EAT's decision confirming that it was not discrimination arising from disability to calculate Mr Williams' pension by reference to his part time hours. In particular, the court found that Mr Williams had not been subjected to any unfavourable treatment.
The Court pointed out that under the rules of the pension scheme, Mr Williams had been treated more favourably than non-disabled employees (who would not have qualified for ill health retirement). It was not sufficient for Mr Williams to argue that he should have been treated better than he was.
This decision is positive result for employers and pension scheme providers. Subject always to the rules of the particular scheme involved, where a reasonable adjustment is made to an employee's working hours, the employee will not suffer discrimination where ill-health retirement benefits are calculated on the basis of their most recent salary and hours worked.