Deaf man ‘constantly failed by jobcentre’
A DEAF jobseeker has won a £50,000 payout after the Department of Work and Pensions repeatedly failed to provide sign language help for him.
Paul Rimmer believed his local jobcentre did not provide the support he needed because they found it “too difficult and too expensive”.
A tribunal awarded Mr
Rimmer £49,880 in damages and interest payments for discriminatory behaviour after hearing staff repeatedly failed to arrange British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation for job-related interviews over a six-year period.
Even when it did provide interpretation, it was sometimes not of a high enough standard for the needs of Mr Rimmer, who is profoundly deaf and has no spoken English.
The tribunal referred three times in its judgement to how Mr Rimmer’s experience of repeated failures by the Leeds jobcentre must have felt like a “groundhog day”, and it describes how he felt he was “constantly fighting for things other people take for granted”.
Every time he faced discrimination, the tribunal concluded, it damaged his “mental wellbeing, whether by frustration or upset or depression or isolation”.
The compensation includes £10,000 in “exemplary damages” imposed due to a “victimising” and “oppressive” internal email sent by a DWP disability equality advisor (DEA) who referred to Mr Rimmer making “multiple” complaints.
Despite a colleague describing Mr Rimmer as “keen to get support”, the DEA suggested Mr Rimmer did not want to work, needed “firm work coaching” and to be sanctioned.
Nick Whittingham, chief executive at Kirklees Citizens Advice and Law Centre, which supported Mr Rimmer with his case, said: “This case shines a light on the way that disabled benefits claimants are treated by the DWP, and is particularly important in light of current political rhetoric.”
A DWP spokesperson said in a statement: “We are considering this judgment.”