Employee with cancer constructively dismissed and awarded £1.2m

The former head of installations at a global IT managed service company has been given a million pound plus compensation award for constructive unfair dismissal at tribunal

The claimant, Andrea Wainwright, had worked at Cennox plc for 17 years, most at her effective date of termination in September 2019 after a return to work after time off sick, having being diagnosed with breast cancer and going on sick leave in 2018.

Now an Employment Tribunal has awarded a claim of £1.2m for loss of earnings following the claimant’s win at appeal, a decision released last August.

The facts in this appeal, held last year, were that following her cancer diagnosis, when Wainwright was off sick, a colleague temporarily stepped in to her role at the Camberley office in Surrey.

After some time, Cennox offered the replacement a permanent position as head of installations with the plan being to split the role with Wainwright when she returned to work.

The company sent out a new organisational chart but did not include the claimant in it and Wainwright only learned of the appointment through LinkedIn.

When Wainwright did return to work, it was not to her existing role and several key responsibilities were taken away from her; she claimed she was offered a role that was a ‘demotion and regulatory non-compliant’.

She felt she had been lied to about the permanent appointment of a replacement for her job, and asked for a grievance meeting, but this was delayed and eventually the culmination of events led to her decision to resign.

The tribunal accepted that ‘this amounted to repudiatory breaches’, adding: ‘We are satisfied that being lied to, even if it was in a clumsy and well-meaning way, is likely to damage the implied term of trust and confidence’.

Judge C Lewis stated: ‘We are satisfied therefore that even though it was well intentioned, the respondent did not establish a reasonable and proper cause for its conduct.

‘We find that this conduct meets the threshold of being conduct which goes to the root of the contract and amounts to a breach of the implied term of mutual trust and confidence.’

In response, Cennox argued that ‘the claimant was engaged in discussions and negotiations around how the new split of the roles of head of installations would work going forward as being affirmation and also the fact that she carried on working and lodged a grievance’.

But Judge Lewis was not persuaded, stating: ‘We do not find that engaging in the discussions about the role and the split of work was affirmation in respect of the breach relied on. We have found that what caused the claimant to resign was substantially her feeling of being misled in those discussions.’

As the employer Cennox did not put forward a ‘potentially fair reason for the claimant’s dismissal’, the tribunal stressed, which was a key factor in the decision that ‘there was a discriminatory, unfair dismissal’.

The judge also stressed that the company’s conduct of ‘misleading the claimant in the way they did, was a breach of the implied terms of mutual trust and confidence’.

Wainwright has now been awarded substantial damages for constructive dismissal and discrimination at the Employment Tribunal, totalling £1,224,861.94 for financial losses and interest, including loss of earnings, pension contributions, anticipated future income and expenses incurred setting up her own business.

This resolves a long-running case which was first heard in March 2021, where the initial Employment Tribunal ruled against Wainwright. After an appeal hearing in July 2024, the tribunal allowed the claim for constructive unfair dismissal and discriminatory unfair dismissal, and also awarded damages for injury to feelings of £40,000 based on the Vento scale.

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