South Wales, United Kingdom

A tribunal made a company pay its former female employee a payout of more than £28,000 after they found that she was fired from her job because she got pregnant again at the end of her maternity leave.

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An unfair dismissal claim was launched by Nikita Twitchen after her company First Grade Projects dismissed her from her job as an administrative assistant in Pontypridd in South Wales in April 2022.

The mother-of-two was preparing to come back from maternity leave when she was dismissed by First Grade Projects they found out she was again expecting a child.

The tribunal judgement said that Twitchen had a meeting with the managing director Jeremy Morgan in February 2023 which started on a positive note as he said that "the business was doing well” and informed her that they recently managed to get a contract with the NHS.

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Morgan had told her that he was looking forward to her comeback and even agreed on what would be her working hours.

Employee's second pregnancy “came as a shock” to boss

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However as the meeting reached its end, Twitchen informed him that she was pregnant again which, according to the tribunal, “came as a shock” to her boss.

After the maternity leave came to an end in March, nobody from the company reached out to the woman to confirm her comeback.

The employee in April asked Morgan regarding her holiday allowance but he “failed to respond substantively”, as per the judgement.

Around a week later, Twitchen sent a follow-up message followed by another but received no response. 

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Later, she was informed that she was made redundant because of the company's financial difficulties and the delay in payments to the firm.

The employee's role was also defunct because the company had installed a new software “which meant that the claimant’s role would no longer exist with her becoming redundant”.

First Grade was also criticised by the judge for not offering “any evidence of the alleged financial difficulties or of the new software” in court.

(With inputs from agencies)