Injury to feelings guidelines amended to take
account of inflation
In Da’Bell v National
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the EAT ruled that the Vento
guidelines, used to assess compensation for injury to feelings in
discrimination cases, should be uplifted to take account of inflation.
Accordingly, the top of: the lower band rises to £6,000; the middle band rises
to £18,000; and the upper limit rises to £30,000.
Ms Da’Bell claimed
that the NSPCC failed to make reasonable adjustments after she suffered a heart
attack, and that she had been constructively dismissed when she resigned due to
the treatment she received. The tribunal dismissed her unfair dismissal claim
but did uphold her disability claim in that reasonable adjustments had not been
made. In arriving at the award for injury to feelings the tribunal decided that
the midpoint of the middle band of injury to feelings awards set out by the
Court of Appeal in Vento v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police was
appropriate but then uplifted that figure to account for inflation, since the
Vento guidelines were set in 2003.
The EAT upheld the
tribunal’s decision confirming that the Vento guidelines needed to be uplifted
in line with the Retail Prices Index, with immediate effect, meaning that the
top of the bottom band would rise from £5,000 to £6,000, the middle band from
£15,000 to £18,000 and the upper limit from £25,000 to £30,000.
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