Answer by Laura Livingstone
With regard to returning after your maternity leave, you are entitled (after 26 weeks ordinary maternity leave) to return to the job you were employed in before you left, on the same terms and conditions as you have would have enjoyed had you not been absent.
Similarly, after additional maternity leave (up to another 26 weeks), you are entitled to return to your previous role unless your employer has a very good reason for not being able to offer your previous job back, in which case they must offer you a suitable alternative job on similar terms and conditions which are no less favourable than you were on before.
From what you have said, I am assuming that you were working full time before you went on maternity leave and requested part-time work on your return. I accept your request to return part time but had not resolved the exact hours you would work by your return. This then got overtaken by the redundancy situation. I do not have enough information from your question to be able to work out whether you made a formal request for flexible working and it was accepted or whether your request had only been informal to start with and the Company was still considering whether it could accommodate your hours. The distinction is important.
If you are already working part time under an agreed flexible working arrangement which was formally approved, then their approach to simply terminate your position on account of you being the only part time credit controller is not only likely to be unfair, but also potentially discriminatory. If, on the other hand the Company is saying due to work insufficiency it cannot accommodate your flexible working request and are therefore reducing 4 full time roles to 3, this could be an entirely legitimate following on process, particularly if allowing all of your to apply for the 3 remaining positions.
In the event that you are the one selected for redundancy your employer would need to demonstrate that they had a fair reason for doing so and had followed the correct procedure. A fair process would include carrying out an objective selection process (with the basis on part time status), inviting you to a meeting before any final decisions were made and considering you for suitable alternative vacancies.
If their action was not fair in all the circumstances, you may have a claim for unfair dismissal (if you have a year’s service or more) and a possible claim for sex discrimination.
Please note that in order to bring any such claim you would need to submit the claim to the Employment Tribunal within 3 months of the day your employment ended. If you were successful at Tribunal on the unfair dismissal claim you would receive a basic award of maximum £430 (for each year you worked at the company), and compensation at a maximum of £72,300. If you were successful on sex discrimination claim, you may be able to claim damages for injury to feelings as well as unlimited compensation for financial loss. There may be further compensation as a result of failure to properly consider your flexible working application or treating you less favourably as a part time worker. This would depend on the facts.
Laura Livingstone is an employment lawyer for Davenport Lyons in London. Her practice focuses on contentious and non-contentious employment work, but she leans towards the non-contentious. She has advised a wide variety of corporate clients in all areas of employment. Harriet Vaines assisted with this answer.
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