Celebrating the newest edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book

John Horan

Cloisters’ John Horan celebrates the new edition of the Equal Treatment Bench Book (ETBB), published last February, which provides genuine advice and a sure-fire method of taking seriously the reasonable adjustments that disabled people require for the litigation process. This comes at a time when, in particular, employment tribunals have shown the same respect for disabled people and set up ‘ground rules hearings’ to investigate what directions the courts or tribunal must arrange in order to assure fairness.

While on the international stage the UK have relied on an older edition of the ETBB as its complete answer to questions about what they were doing to ensure disabled people were treated fairly in court and tribunal, in fact that edition had not been read by the majority of judges or practitioners.

The concept of ‘ground rules hearing’ were unknown to courts and tribunals in the UK until this double standard was pointed out in Rackham and Galo.

In this new analysis, published by the Legal Action Group, John Horan gives advice on how the ETBB might affect the relationship between claimant solicitors or law centre workers with disabled clients and provides a ‘one stop shop’ to ensuring that disabled clients have effective justice from the courts and tribunals.