Employment tribunal cases 2025-2026: what employers actually got wrong

Before we get into the cases, two numbers that should reframe how you think about tribunal risk.

Tribunal claims in the last quarter of 2025 were 54% higher than the same quarter the previous year. The system currently has 58,000 open cases, the highest figure since 2020, with some hearings listed for 2029.

And from 1st January 2027, the cap on unfair dismissal compensation is being removed entirely. For the first time in UK employment law history, a tribunal will be able to award whatever it considers just, with no ceiling. At the same time, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection drops from two years to six months.

These two changes together mean the population of people who can claim just got significantly bigger, and the amount they can claim just got significantly higher.

That is the context in which everything below happened. Read these cases accordingly.

The Teams chat dismissal: context isn't optional

Khokhar and Miller v British Telecommunications Plc. ET references 8001308/2025 and 8001309/2025. Reported in Reed Smith UK Employment Law Update, March 2026.

An employer set up a Teams chat so a remote team of customer-facing advisors could stay in touch, discuss work and let off steam. A colleague posted what he wished he could do to a difficult customer. It was violent in nature. Two other employees responded supportively to the comment.

All three were dismissed.

The employment tribunal found the dismissals unfair. The employer had looked only at the words in the chat without considering the wider context: that the chat had been set up specifically as an informal outlet, that the comments were made in response to someone else's frustration rather than independently, and that the mitigating factors hadn't been properly weighed.

The lesson is not that violent language at work is acceptable. It isn't. The lesson is that dismissal decisions have to be based on a proper investigation of the full context, not just a screenshot of the words. If you are considering dismissal for something that happened in an informal channel, your investigation needs to include how that channel was being used and what the surrounding circumstances were.

The cancer cover-up: don't fill someone's role behind their back

Wainwright v Cennox plc. EAT judgment handed down 2023, published July 2025. Remedies judgment May 2025. Award: £1,224,861.94.

A senior employee with nearly 17 years' service went on sick leave while having treatment for breast cancer. During her absence, her employer appointed a colleague to cover her role. When that colleague was then offered a job elsewhere, the employer made the cover appointment permanent, assuming there would be enough work for both of them when she returned.

She found out via a LinkedIn post congratulating her colleague on the role. When she asked HR, she was told her position was unaffected. That wasn't true. She later discovered the appointment was permanent, was presented with a new job description she saw as a demotion, raised grievances that went unresolved, and resigned.

The tribunal found constructive dismissal and disability discrimination, and she was awarded over £1.2 million.

Here is the part that matters, because it's easy to take the wrong lesson from this case. The discrimination wasn't arranging cover during her absence. That's normal and reasonable, and the tribunal said as much. The problem was making the replacement permanent without telling her, and then actively misleading her that it was temporary. That deception is what broke the implied duty of trust and confidence.

So the lesson isn't "never cover someone's role while they're off." It's the opposite. Cover it if you need to. But keep the person informed, be honest about what's temporary and what's permanent, and never tell someone their job is safe when you're quietly making other plans. Disability discrimination awards are uncapped, and they are one of the fastest growing categories of tribunal claim.

If someone is off sick for an extended period, keep them involved in decisions that affect their role, and if the absence is connected to a health condition, ask whether reasonable adjustments apply before you make any significant decisions.

The covert surveillance case: hiring a private investigator almost always makes things worse

Wilson v Aliaxis UK Limited. ET Case No: 2304190/2023. Ashford Employment Tribunal, Employment Judge Jones KC. Liability decision published on GOV.UK 11th August 2025; remedy decision 19th March 2026. Total award: £30,793.78.

Neil Wilson worked in a warehouse for Aliaxis UK Limited in Maidstone. He went off sick with a spinal condition and was receiving 70% of his salary through the company's insurance scheme. His employer didn't believe him. So they hired a private investigator.

The investigator filmed Wilson moving freely. Aliaxis also trawled his social media. Armed with that footage, the HR director concluded he was a fraudster, cancelled his insurance payments, and dismissed him.

There was one problem. An occupational health assessment had already concluded Wilson was unable to carry out his duties. The tribunal found the sequence particularly damning: Aliaxis fired him for being incapable of work while simultaneously cancelling the insurance benefits he was entitled to because they believed he was faking it. You cannot have it both ways.

The Ashford Employment Tribunal found unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. Wilson was awarded just under £32,000, including £13,000 for injury to feelings.

Worth noting: the tribunal didn't find everything in Wilson's favour. The reasonable adjustments claim and the argument that the capability process itself was discriminatory were both dismissed. The finding was specifically about the surveillance process and dismissing someone despite clear medical evidence. So this isn't "you can never look into a suspected fraudulent claim." It's something more specific: you cannot ignore occupational health evidence, cancel someone's insurance without proper process, and then use footage of them "moving freely" as the basis for a disability dismissal.

If you have genuine concerns about whether a sickness absence is genuine, the starting point is occupational health, a fit note review and, where appropriate, independent medical evidence. If those come back and still leave you with concerns, take advice before you do anything else. A private investigator hired before you've exhausted proper medical routes will almost always undermine your position rather than strengthen it. And covert surveillance carries its own data protection risk under UK GDPR on top of everything else.

The wrong dismissal reason: why you need to get this right before you act

Chand v EE Ltd [2026] EAT 17. Judgment of Lord Fairley, 11th February 2026. Remedy hearing pending.

An employer dismissed a long-serving employee for fraud across four incidents. The tribunal found there was no reasonable basis for believing any of them were fraudulent. The dismissal was therefore unfair, even though the employer might have been able to dismiss the same employee for a genuine policy breach that had also occurred, had that been the actual reason relied on at the time.

That last part is the whole point of the case. The tribunal couldn't uphold the dismissal on a narrower or different basis than the one the employer actually used. The stated reason was fraud. Once fraud fell away, there was nothing left holding the dismissal up, even though a fair reason existed in parallel and went unused.

This is a more common trap than it sounds. An employer decides to dismiss, lands on the most serious-sounding reason available, and then finds the evidence for that reason doesn't hold up. The policy breach that was also present might have supported a fair dismissal. But they didn't rely on it at the time, so they couldn't fall back on it later.

Before you dismiss anyone, be clear on what the actual reason is and make sure the evidence supports that specific reason. If there are multiple issues, take advice on which one, or which combination, is most defensible. Don't reach for the most dramatic charge if the evidence is thin.

The flexible working dismissal: childcare disparity is now something tribunals take for granted

Dobson v North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust (No.2) [2026] EAT 32. Employment Appeal Tribunal, Mr Justice Choudhury, April 2026. Final outcome: Trust's flexible working requirement upheld, Dobson's claims dismissed.

Dobson was a community nurse in Cumbria. From 2008 she worked a fixed two-day pattern, Wednesdays and Thursdays, because of her childcare responsibilities including two disabled children. She'd worked those days for years and everyone had been fine with it.

In 2016 the Trust introduced a new policy requiring all community nurses to work flexibly, including weekends. Dobson said she couldn't. She was dismissed and offered re-engagement on the new terms. She claimed indirect sex discrimination and unfair dismissal.

This case has been through three tribunal hearings and two EAT appeals. Here's what the courts decided along the way, because each stage teaches employers something different.

The original Employment Tribunal dismissed her claims, finding no evidence of group disadvantage.

The first EAT appeal in 2021 overturned that. The EAT ruled that tribunals must take judicial notice of the childcare disparity. In other words, tribunals can now assume, without requiring statistical proof, that women bear a greater burden of childcare responsibilities than men. That principle is now settled law and applies to every flexible working dispute from this point forward.

The case went back to the Employment Tribunal, which in 2023 found the Trust's policy was justified. It was a legitimate operational requirement, proportionately applied.

Dobson appealed again. In April 2026 the EAT dismissed her appeal and confirmed the Trust's position. But it added something significant: Dobson's refusal to engage with any alternatives during consultation was held against her. She had been, in the EAT's words, intransigent. An employee who takes an all-or-nothing approach weakens their own case.

So the Trust won. But it won because it had a genuine operational need, documented its reasoning, and had considered alternatives. And it won despite a policy that the courts confirmed puts women at a disadvantage as a group.

The lesson for small employers is not "you can change working patterns and get away with it." The lesson is that you can introduce or maintain a working pattern requirement that disadvantages one group if you can show it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, and if you have genuinely engaged in consultation and considered alternatives before reaching the point of dismissal. Document every step. If the employee refuses to engage, note that too.

Without that evidence base, you are in indirect sex discrimination territory the moment a parent of young children pushes back.

The sham redundancy: process is not optional even when the decision feels obvious

Strydom v Bridge Facilities Engineers Limited. ET Case No: 3305964/2021. Watford Employment Tribunal, Employment Judge J Galbraith-Marten, 13th April 2023. Unfair dismissal found; remedy hearing ordered. Included for the ERA 2025 financial exposure context.

An employer made an employee redundant via a process that was found to be a sham. The role wasn't genuinely redundant, the selection was predetermined and the consultation was a formality rather than a genuine exercise.

The tribunal found unfair dismissal.

This pattern is extremely common in small businesses where a decision has already been made, for completely understandable commercial reasons, before the process begins. The problem is that a genuine redundancy process has to include meaningful consultation, genuine consideration of alternatives and fair selection where multiple people are at risk. If the outcome is fixed before the process starts, that's exactly what a tribunal is trained to identify.

From 1st January 2027, the compensation cap on unfair dismissal awards is removed. A case like this that currently results in an award capped at £125,700 will have no ceiling at all. The cost of a badly handled redundancy is about to become materially harder to predict.

If you are considering redundancy, take advice before the process starts, not after it goes wrong.

What the pattern across all of these is

Not malice. Not deliberate rule-breaking. In most of these cases the employer thought they were doing something reasonable.

The problems were: not understanding what the legal reason for a decision needed to be, not investigating properly before acting, not being honest with an absent employee, and treating process as a box to tick rather than a genuine exercise.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 raises the stakes on all of these. More employees qualify for unfair dismissal protection from 2027. Tribunal claims are already at record levels. Awards are about to become uncapped. The time limit for bringing claims is increasing to six months from October 2026.

None of this means you can't manage people properly, including managing them out when it's the right decision. It means you need to know what proper looks like before you start, not after you've already done the thing you're trying to defend.

If something is coming up and you're not sure whether your process is right, that's exactly the moment to ask.

Last reviewed: August 2026. This article is general guidance, not legal advice, and does not create a solicitor-client or adviser relationship. Every case turns on its own facts. If you are dealing with a live situation, take advice specific to your circumstances. Full case citations are given under each heading above.