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Original poster

Is this discriminatory? Job and driving requirement

33 replies

Mygardenandme · 07/10/2025 07:24

Civil service job. Offices throughout England and Wales. HEO. Office based but can be based at any office.

99% of travel in our dept is done by train and you are strongly discouraged from driving. Although you have to justify any travel at all.

I spoke with the person doing the job atm and it involves lots of meetings with people from all the offices from AA to SEO. There are some external meetings but they are on Teams or very rarely in a central location. All the meetings are planned in advance.

The current (small) project team has staff throughout England so most meetings are on Teams. When they do rarely meet face to face, most travel by train. Im not in an office where any of them are based.

So clearly there is a need for travel. Although not as much as first implied and generally done by train. The job advert states that a driving license is essential. I have epilepsy so no driving license.

I'm going to speak with the team leader to see if I can still apply. If not, I'm not going to do anything about it. It's quite a visible team and I like working in the dept so dont want to get reputation.

YANBU - A driving license might be preferred but as long as someone is willing to travel by train, there is no reason they cant do the job. It is disability discrimination.

YABU - The job might be mainly Teams based but there is enough travel to make relying on public transport too risky. It's not disability discrimination because they can justify the driving license requirement.

OP posts:
lljkk · 07/10/2025 07:46

Just apply for the job & argue why you know you can manage the travel requirements.
You'll tag yourself as annoying prospective employee if you insist on challenging this on discrimination grounds when you're not even in post and haven't even applied.

FWIW, I applied for a job that implied "driving license required" and then found out the guy I was replacing got everywhere by bus. I ended up cycling to most our meetings that were away from office site.

HermioneWeasley · 07/10/2025 07:45

Spartak · 07/10/2025 07:29

I work in a community team in the NHS in a rural area where public transport is crap.

We've had to remove the driving licence requirement from job adverts as HR advises that is discriminatory. It's pretty much impossible to do the job without being able to drive.

Your HR team are fucking idiots. No wonder so many have a fire reputation if this is the sort of incorrect advice they’re giving

Magicmonster · 07/10/2025 07:41

I am an employment lawyer. This would only be lawful if they had a good reason for requiring a driving license and there was no other feasible workaround. If you could use trains and / or other forms of transport then your lack of driving licence shouldn’t rule you out

OverlyFragrant · 07/10/2025 07:39

My own job in the civil service has driving as essential. Even my provisional has expired, and not once, in the 8 years I've been in the job, have I been at a disadvantage.

I recently went to apply for a similar job, with less travel for a different dept. One of the requirements to even be eligible to apply was to be a holder of a driving licence. I wrote to them explaining my situation, and they said whilst the post in london might be suitable for non-drivers, it wouldn't be fair to other regions if they removed it for london and not them.

Made absolutely no sense whatsoever, so I wished them well.

Frogs88 · 07/10/2025 07:38

Speak to them and see. When I was in a community nursing team our adverts always said driving licence/car essential, but we had staff that didn’t drive and took the bus/walked everywhere and the manager seemed fine with it even though it meant they could do fewer visits. If it’s not going to affect your ability to get places then I don’t see why it’ll be a problem.

sashh · 07/10/2025 07:35

Spartak · 07/10/2025 07:29

I work in a community team in the NHS in a rural area where public transport is crap.

We've had to remove the driving licence requirement from job adverts as HR advises that is discriminatory. It's pretty much impossible to do the job without being able to drive.

Well it is, but it is legal discrimination. Why do so many HR departments not understand the actual law?

Agix · 07/10/2025 07:33

Jobs that say that driving licenses, or even the ability to travel or attend an office, are essential things when they're absolutely not are all discriminatory.

Good luck having that mean anything to anyone besides who it impacts though. Disability discrimination is commonplace.

Spartak · 07/10/2025 07:29

I work in a community team in the NHS in a rural area where public transport is crap.

We've had to remove the driving licence requirement from job adverts as HR advises that is discriminatory. It's pretty much impossible to do the job without being able to drive.