What Lucy McCarthy told us
A tribunal judgment records findings. It does not record what the year felt like for the person at the centre of it. After the decision in her case was published, Lucy McCarthy spoke to PatientsCann UK, and asked us to share what happened so that other patients might be spared some of it.
In her own words
What happened, as Lucy describes it
The job she was doing
Lucy worked for the council as a work coach for young people aged 18 to 25 who are autistic or have ADHD. It was support work, built on trust and continuity with young people who often find both hard to come by.
Driving was not part of the role
This is where her recollection and the tribunal's description part company most clearly. Lucy says her job carried no driving requirement at all. Most journeys between work locations were walkable, so she generally walked, and she occasionally used her own vehicle during working hours. By the time she went off sick, carrying service users in an employee's own vehicle was completely prohibited in any case.
She also says there were no legal restrictions stopping her from driving while taking prescribed medical cannabis, provided she was unimpaired, and that she held the appropriate business insurance. She had explained to her employer that, as with any other medicine, she was the person legally responsible for deciding whether she was impaired and fit to drive.
The tribunal, on the evidence before it, described a role involving some driving around the district and occasionally transporting service users, and treated that as part of why the employer was entitled to ask for more information. Lucy's position is that the driving element was incidental, personal and small, and that it became the centre of a case it never really belonged in.
Depression came first
Around August her depression became severe. During that period she used cocaine and became dependent on it, and she is candid that it sent her into a spiral. She did not hide any of it. She talked to colleagues about what was happening to her, and as she describes it now, she was asking for help.
Depression, not cannabis, was the thread running through everything that followed. She spent time in and out of hospital and care. Through all of it, she says, she wanted to get back to work, and she did everything she could think of to make that possible.
What she handed over, and when they asked for more
In November 2023 she gave her line manager the clinic's initial consultation letter, along with supporting information and research she had gathered herself. She had not yet accessed the clinic's online portal, so she did not have the prescription itself to give them.
Nobody asked her for the prescription, or for any further documents, until February 2024. That was more than three months later, and by then she had already started the grievance and ACAS process. Her account is that the paperwork she did provide was not passed on to anyone else, and that the delays and repeated requests grew out of that gap rather than out of any refusal on her part.
Four Employee Healthcare assessments in about four months
She was assessed four times over roughly four months. As she describes the sequence:
- She was extremely low and suicidal, and struggling to manage her emotions. This was around the time she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.
- Her anxiety and depression scores had improved a great deal. She was fit to return and wanted to, but was kept off because of concerns about her cannabis use, and because she was not engaging with NHS treatment she did not think was right for her.
- She was again found fit to return, but the report was said not to contain enough detail about the cannabis for her employer's purposes.
- She was again found fit to return, and this time the report went into more detail about the cannabis, including the strain, the strength and its effects.
Three of the four assessments found her fit for work. What kept changing, on her account, was how much detail her employer wanted about the medicine rather than anything about her ability to do the job.
Two months lost trying to get back
From February to April, while she was trying to return to work, her employer sought to make not driving during working hours a condition of her return, including in a formal risk assessment. Lucy declined that condition. She says the standoff delayed her return by around two months.
She was eventually allowed back in April, and allowed to drive during working hours.
Other medicines, handled differently
Her employer already knew she had been taking other medicines that can cause impairment, including the antipsychotics aripiprazole and risperidone. On her account, none of that led to an Employee Healthcare referral, a restriction on her driving, or a risk assessment about driving at all.
The contrast is central to how she understands what happened. The same concern, applied consistently, would have been raised about the earlier medication too.
Still waiting on the right diagnosis
Alongside all of this she was untangling her own medical history. Her formal diagnosis is borderline personality disorder, also called emotionally unstable personality disorder, which she believes is incorrect. Her diagnosis also notes traits of autism spectrum disorder.
Since starting legal proceedings she has received an ADHD diagnosis through her university. Because that is not classed as a formal medical diagnosis, she is now waiting on formal medical assessment for ADHD and for autism. That was an ongoing struggle with NHS mental health services, running in parallel with the workplace process, and it fed further employer concern at exactly the point she needed the least of it.
Her view, looking back, is that her health and her treatment ended up being used against her rather than supported.
Looking back
The one thing she would do differently
If I had not been so open about my prescription and my personal life, I think I would still have my job.Lucy McCarthy, speaking to PatientsCann UK
That is a hard sentence for an advocacy organisation to print, because it cuts against what we usually tell patients. It deserves to be printed anyway. Lucy was open, honest and unwell, and being open did not protect her. What she describes is not a patient who withheld information. It is a patient who handed over what she had, to the person she was told to hand it to, while she was at her lowest, and then waited three months for anyone to ask her for the rest.
She believes that had she said less, she would still be doing the job, and would not have been treated differently because of her medication. We cannot know whether that is true. What we can say is that nothing she told us should have cost her anything, and that the failure here was in how it was handled, not in her honesty.
We want to be clear about one more thing, for her and for anyone reading this who recognises themselves in it. Being ill is not a failure of professionalism. Asking colleagues for help is not a mistake of character. If the system around her had worked, none of it would have counted against her.
For patients
Open with the right people, guarded with everyone else
PatientsCann UK has always advised patients to be open and transparent with their employer about their treatment. We stand by that. What Lucy's experience shows is that who you tell, and how you tell them, matters as much as being honest in the first place.
There are two very different kinds of disclosure, and they are easy to blur when you are unwell and you want to be understood.
The formal route: be complete
Occupational health, HR, and your line manager acting in a formal capacity. This is where your prescription, your dosing, your prescriber's driving advice and your adjustments belong.
- Put it in writing, to a named person.
- Keep your own copy of everything you send.
- Ask for written confirmation that it was received and passed on.
- Chase it if you hear nothing within a week or two.
The personal route: be careful
Colleagues, team chats and corridor conversations. Kindness lives here, and so does risk. Nothing you say to a colleague stays with that colleague, and none of it is recorded the way a formal disclosure is.
- You can be honest that you are unwell without itemising why.
- Your diagnosis, your medication and your dose are not owed to a team.
- Colleagues repeat what worries them, usually meaning well.
- Support is better asked of occupational health than of a workmate.
Why the difference is so sharp. Cannabis still carries a stigma that other prescribed medicines do not. A colleague who hears the word cannabis, or hears about a bad month, often has no education to place it against, and fills the gap with what they have absorbed elsewhere. That is not their fault and it is certainly not yours, but it can turn concern into an incident, and an incident into a file.
None of this means hiding a lawful prescription, and it does not mean being dishonest. It means choosing your channel. Give the formal process everything it properly needs, in writing, so that a gap can never be blamed on you. Keep your private life private, because you are entitled to.
If your role is safety-sensitive
Where a job involves driving, vulnerable people, machinery, safeguarding or clinical work, send the formal route a complete picture in one go:
- proof that the medicine is lawfully prescribed to you;
- a clinic or prescriber letter that speaks to your treatment;
- the dose, frequency and route of administration;
- your prescriber's advice on driving, and when not to drive;
- whether you are settled on the dose or have recently changed it;
- any adjustments or controls that would manage a real risk.
And establish, early and in writing, what your duties actually are. Lucy's case turned in part on how much driving her role involved. If a duty is incidental, occasional, or not required of you at all, say so plainly at the start, before a risk assessment is built on top of it.
It is also worth asking, politely and in writing, how the same concern was handled for your previous medication. If you have taken other medicines that can affect alertness without any of this being raised, that difference is a fair question to put on the record early.
Support
If any of this is close to home
Samaritans are there day and night on 116 123, free to call. If you would rather not speak to anyone, you can text SHOUT to 85258, also free, at any hour. For problems with drugs or alcohol, FRANK and your local drug and alcohol service can help without judgement, and speaking to them does not put your prescription at risk. If you are struggling to get the right diagnosis or care, your GP can refer you, and you are allowed to ask for a second opinion.
Read what the judgment actually said
Our analysis of the decision in Miss L McCarthy v Kirklees Metropolitan Council sets out what the tribunal found, what it did not find, and how the case was reported.
References
Sources for this page, and the support services named in it.
- McCarthy, L. Interview with PatientsCann UK, 2026, with written corrections supplied by the interviewee prior to publication. First-hand account given directly to PatientsCann UK and published with her consent.
- Miss L McCarthy v Kirklees Metropolitan Council. Employment Tribunal judgment. Available from the published Employment Tribunal decisions repository.
- PatientsCann UK. What the McCarthy tribunal decision really says about medical cannabis, driving and work. Available at: our analysis of the judgment.
- Samaritans. Free, day and night, on 116 123. Available at: samaritans.org.
- Shout. Free 24 hour text support, text SHOUT to 85258. Available at: giveusashout.org.
- FRANK. Honest information about drugs, and local support services. Available at: talktofrank.com.
