Woman sacked after getting pregnant on maternity leave gets £28,000 payout

A woman has been given a payout of more than£28,000 after a tribunal found she was laid off from her job because she returned from maternity leave pregnant.

Nikita Twitchen launched an unfair dismissal claim after she was made redundant from her job as an administrative assistant at a building company called First Grade Projects in Pontypridd in South Wales in April 2022.

The mother-of-two had been gearing up to return from maternity leave when First Grade Projects dismissed her after finding out she was expecting a child again.

Ms Twitchen attended a meeting with the managing director Jeremy Morgan in February 2023 that began “positively”, with him “saying the business was doing well” and explaining they recently managed to secure a contract with the NHS, a tribunal judgement said. 

Mr Morgan said he was looking forward to her coming back to work and they agreed what hours she would be working.

But as the meeting came towards the end, Ms Twitchen explained she was pregnant again, with the tribunal finding this update “came as a shock” to her boss.

After her maternity leave finished at the end of March, nobody from her company contacted her to confirm her return to work. 

In April, she asked Mr Morgan about her holiday allowance for later in the year but he “failed to respond substantively”, which was not like him, according to the judgement.

Ms Twitchen sent a follow-up message around a week later and then another message roughly another week afterwards.

Later that day, she received a call from Mr Morgan, who told her that she was being made redundant because of financial difficulties and the firm was enduring delays in recieving payments.

It was also suggested her role was defunct because of new software being installed “which meant that the claimant’s role would no longer exist with her becoming redundant”.

Judge Havard noted Mr Morgan had not mentioned financial difficulties, redundancy or new software when they had met back in February.

The judge criticised First Grade for not offering “any evidence of the alleged financial difficulties or of the new software” in court, with the judgment also drawing attention to the fact Ms Twitchen was never given a written explanation for why she had been let go.