Mum wins £300,000 after bosses sacked her for falling pregnant

2 December 2021, 11:23

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

Naomi Hefford was fired from her job working at a GP surgery back in 2018.

A woman has won over £300,000 from her former bosses after she was fired for falling pregnant.

GP practice manager Naomi Hefford was awarded the huge sum of money when she launched a discrimination claim against the doctors who she worked for.

An employment tribunal heard that Ms Hefford had walked into the partners of the surgery secretly hatching a plan to fire her in 2018, three days after she told them she was going to have a baby.

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Ms Hefford often used her phone to record meetings so she could write up minutes, and accidentally taped the conversation.

The tribunal judgements states: "Her recollection was that the words were these: ‘We need to focus now. We need to focus on sacking her and then steadying the ship because that’s going to take up an awful lot of time'.

“(She) also explained that she had heard the female voice saying that 'If we are going to do this what will be our excuse?'.”

She also heard the doctors calling her a ‘mother hen’ before she became ‘very upset and ran away’.

The GPs are then said to have launched a misconduct investigation into Ms Hefford, claiming she had been rude to staff and didn't follow feedback.

They then fired her by email when she was in hospital just days before giving birth to her daughter.

Ms Hefford complained to HR at the time she had been discriminated against, but they ruled against her and she was dismissed.

Following a hearing in east London earlier this year, Ms Hefford successfully sued the doctors and the tribunal found she had suffered unfair dismissal, pregnancy discrimination, victimisation and breach of contract.

The new mum was originally awarded £294,372 in compensation, but now she has won an extra £20,000 after she put forward another claim.

Ms Hefforid said that she was entitled to a greater sum because she would have received a higher pay and bonus if she had not lost her job.

The hearing was told that Mrs Hefford began work at Queensway Surgery, Southend, Essex, in November 2017 and was hired following an interview with partners Dr Michael Jack, Dr Ajith Sivaprasad, Dr Jamil Sorouji, Dr Olanike Aderonmu and Dr Sajid Azeem.