Taking effect from April 6 2021, the limit on the compensatory award for unfair dismissal rises from £88,693 to £89,669. Also, the maximum amount of ‘a week’s pay’ for the purpose of calculating redundancy payments rises from £560 to £566.

Mr D Barrow v Kellog Brown & Root (UK) Limited 2303683/18/V

Extract from a blog by Anita Vadgama, DID Law,  solicitor for the Claimant:

"In 2017 Mr Barrow had begun to experience symptoms of cancer (undiagnosed at the time) and wrote some defensive emails to his manager, Andrew Barrie, while he was suffering from the side effects of oral steroid medication. He was clearly not his usual self. Oral steroids have a known impact on mood, especially in men. No formal concerns were ever raised before, out of the blue on 6 December 2017, the Claimant was called into a meeting with KBR’s HR Director, Tim Rosbrook, and told “These discussions are always difficult but I’m afraid KBR can no longer employ you.  No reason was given, and Mr Rosbrook openly admitted “the Company has probably missed out several steps in its normal processes”. He then told Mr Barrow he had 20 minutes to leave and escorted him with his personal belongings from the building. Immediately afterwards, Andrew Barrie, his line manager, sent out an email to the senior leadership team which read “I have this afternoon let David Barrow go”.

To say that the Claimant was floored, is an underestimation.  His whole world was turned upside down.  He had been excluded from the workplace, but he was not entirely sure whether he had been terminated or suspended or if there was another reason. He had been blindsided by events. In January 2018 Mr Barrow’s cancer was formally diagnosed, a rare cancer, and which he duly told his employer.  However, just six weeks later and coinciding with starting chemotherapy, the company then attempted to instigate a post-dated dismissal process to show that they had followed a fair procedure. This was a sham as the Tribunal later found. The Claimant was formally dismissed in May 2018.

The ET, finding for Mr Barrow on several claims including discriminatory dismissal, section 15 discrimination and harassment, found that there had been no genuine attempt by the company to look at matters afresh and consider David’s mitigating health circumstances in the subsequent months. The dismissal was outside the range of reasonable responses. The tribunal held: “No reasonable employer would have acted in the way the Respondent did in dismissing an employee who had spent 36 years working for the company”.

The ET also concluded that Andrew Barrie, who had made both the initial and final decisions to dismiss, had tried to suggest that the dismissal was rooted in a breakdown of trust and confidence. His actions were held to be a ruse disguising the real reasons for his actions. The emails which Mr Barrow wrote were a material factor in the decision to dismiss. There was a connection between the emails and Mr Barrow’s disability and therefore the claim of section 15 discrimination, discrimination arising in consequence of disability, was well founded.
The dismissal itself was an act of harassment. It was unwanted conduct related to disability.

For the Claimant, what was more debilitating was not his cancer, but the impact that his employer’s actions had on his mental health. Expert psychiatric evidence determined that his severe depression and anxiety he suffered was caused by the treatment he was subjected to by his employer. It confirmed that David had not been able to work because of this or even in the foreseeable future some 3½ years on, if at all. He most certainly will never secure a commensurate role." 

£2,567,831.96 was awarded to the Claimant for discriminatory dismissal, which was also found to be an act of harassment. This sum included an award for aggravated damages of £7500. 

To read the blog, click here and to read the liability judgment, click here.