Mrs C A Hobbs v Avon Care Homes Ltd — 2020

The tribunal heard evidence from the claimant, Mrs Rea, Mrs Bila and Mrs Mills and preferred the claimant and Mrs Mills on the central disputes. It rejected the respondent's case that the claimant had engineered her dismissal for financial gain, finding instead that she was a principled employee who had previously considered resigning over a safeguarding issue and whose account of the events between 3 and 8 April 2019 was credible.

The tribunal found that after Mrs Mills's interview on 3 April, Mrs Rea and the claimant discussed how to proceed, that the claimant emailed Harben Green in tentative terms, and that the claimant later received confirmation that Mrs Mills would accept a salary of £52,000. It accepted that the claimant's notes, her internet searches on 5 April about racism and discrimination, and the timing of the emails were consistent with her account. On 8 April the tribunal found that Mrs Bila said she did not want to employ Mrs Mills because she was black, and that the claimant understood she was being asked to progress a recruitment process that would exclude Mrs Mills for that reason.

The tribunal held that this destroyed the claimant's trust and confidence in the respondent and amounted to a fundamental breach of contract for the purposes of constructive unfair dismissal under s.95(1)(c) Employment Rights Act 1996. It found that the claimant resigned promptly in response to that breach by leaving work and emailing her resignation later the same day. The respondent's argument that she should first have raised a grievance was rejected. Liability was upheld, and remedy was left to be determined at a later telephone case management hearing.