Ms M Pasternak v Blackpool Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust — 2025

Ms M Pasternak was employed by Blackpool Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust as a Clinical Assistant from 22 November 2023 to 19 November 2024. She brought a wrongful dismissal claim concerning whether she was entitled to notice pay at the end of the engagement. The tribunal noted that a separate unfair dismissal claim had been withdrawn at a case management hearing on 24 June 2025 because she did not have two years' continuous service.

The tribunal found that the August 2023 advertisement described the post as a 12-month secondment role and that the conditional offer letter sent through TRAC was not itself the contract of employment. It found that the contract of employment was uploaded to TRAC on 30 October 2023, stated that the role was fixed term from 20 November 2023 to 19 November 2024, and would have been accessible to the claimant through the TRAC system. The tribunal found that if the claimant had opened the uploaded contract, the fixed-term nature and end date would have been clear.

Although the claimant did not access or accept the contract on TRAC, the tribunal found that she accepted employment on the terms offered because she worked under those terms for the 12-month period. It accepted that Ms McGuire had mistakenly believed the claimant was permanent, but found that this was because she had not checked the contract before replying in haste. On that basis, the tribunal held that the claimant was not entitled to notice either under contract or statute, because the fixed-term contract expired automatically on 19 November 2024. The wrongful dismissal claim was dismissed.