Tribunal Member Anthony Perriam Tribunal Member Diane Massie Mrs Nadia Ghaffar v ’s Husband Innocence Nursery Ltd — 2022

The claimant worked for Innocence Nursery Ltd as a nursery practitioner from 11 November 2019 until 22 April 2020. The tribunal accepted that the COVID-19 lockdown caused a genuine reduction in demand at the nursery in March 2020, that the business closed to its usual clientele for several months, and that the claimant was dismissed for redundancy together with another nursery practitioner, Fiona McTaggart, with a third employee, Jasmine Mannix, resigning before redundancy dismissal.

Although the tribunal had concerns about the respondents' witnesses and preferred the claimant's evidence that she had told Ms Saima Kiyani she was pregnant, and that Kiyani had told children and staff about the pregnancy, it found some minor performance issues existed but not that they were the reason for dismissal. The tribunal held that the claimant's pregnancy was not the reason or principal reason for dismissal, so the s.18 Equality Act 2010 pregnancy discrimination complaint and the s.99 Employment Rights Act 1996 automatic unfair dismissal complaint both failed.

The tribunal also criticised the handling of the appeal, including the lack of an independent decision-maker, but those procedural concerns did not alter the outcome because the live claims were pregnancy discrimination and automatic unfair dismissal rather than ordinary unfair dismissal. The tribunal dismissed the complaint in its entirety and made no award. The holiday pay and notice pay issues were removed from the live issues because the tribunal found there was no live dispute on those points.