Disabled grandmother wins £1,000 payout from Tesco for discrimination after forecourt staff refuse to pump up her car's tyres

Jenni Crowly has difficulty bending down but forecourt workers at a Tesco filling station refused to check her tyre pressure for her, citing health and safety fears.

She took the chain to court and yesterday it was ordered to pay her £1,000 after being found to have breached the Disability Discrimination Act.

Scroll down for more...

After her victory, the 51-year- old, who ran cake decoration classes before illhealth forced her to retire, hit out at Tesco for being inconsiderate towards disabled drivers.

"They will help with petrol, oil and water but not air - what is the difference?", she said.

The divorced mother of four suffers from arthritis and fibromyalgia - a disorder that causes the body to be in chronic discomfort - making bending down extremely painful.

She used to travel from her home in Connah's Quay, North Wales, to the Tesco store in nearby Broughton where staff were happy to check her tyres for her.

Scroll down for more...

But when its pressure gauge was out of action she drove to the branch in Mold, where staff refused to help.

When Mrs Crowly complained-Tesco cited health and safety reasons, saying forecourt staff at all 426 of its filling stations were not insured for the possibility that wrongly inflated tyres might result in an accident.

Mrs Crowly sued the company under the 2005 Act, which requires businesses to take reasonable steps to be accessible to disabled customers.

At Mold County Court, Tesco's solicitor, Toby Starr, said the store had an arrangement with a nearby shop that could take disabled customers' tyre pressures and that staff had offered to hold the hose while Mrs Crowly checked her tyres.

He argued that Tesco was a supermarket, not a garage, that tyre pressure checks were a free facility, not a service, and that it was not being discriminatory as it did not check any customers' tyres for them.

Yesterday, however, District Judge Viv Reeves found Mrs Crowly had suffered discrimination and ordered Tesco to pay her £1,000 for injury to feelings.

He concluded: "I am not satisfied on the evidence before me that the defendant's policy is necessary in order not to endanger the health or safety of any person, including the claimant."

The court does not have the power to make Tesco change its policy, but afterwards Mrs Crowly called on the store to back down.

"It beggars belief - I think it is down to pig ignorance," she said.

"There are a lot of people worse off than me and they rely on their cars so much and don't have anyone to check their tyres."

She added that her local Asda store had offered to check her tyre pressure whenever she wanted.

Tesco is thought to be planning an appeal.

A spokesman said last night: "We're disappointed with this decision and we'll consider our options."

Helen Smith, of disabled drivers' charity Mobilise, said of the health and safety argument: "Frankly, it's usually just an excuse that's bandied around in order to do nothing to help."