And speaking of losing your rag with the night sky brings me to the the case of Griffiths v Essex County Council [2026], in which the Employment Appeal Tribunal had to determine how compensation should be assessed where a claimant succeeds in both a complaint of indirect disability discrimination and a complaint of unfair constructive dismissal.

Nicola Griffiths, a qualified social worker, worked for Essex County Council from 2004, and from January 2014 as a Child in Need Reviewing Officer, providing independent oversight for social work teams. She was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and had a mental impairment. In April 2018, a newly appointed manager raised concerns about her work, and Ms Griffiths was told that complaints had been made against her, without being given any details of who had complained or what the allegations were. An investigation followed, but she was not informed it was happening and was not allowed to take part in it. This left her anxious, paranoid and struggling to trust her employer. Over the following eighteen months, supervision was patchy, a grievance and grievance appeal failed to resolve her concerns, and no sanctions were taken against those involved. By February 2020, with her confidence in the Council exhausted, Ms Griffiths resigned.

Ms Griffiths then brought claims against Essex County Council for indirect disability discrimination and constructive unfair dismissal, citing the Council’s failure to keep her informed and the lasting damage this caused to her trust in her employer.

The Employment Tribunal upheld one complaint of indirect disability discrimination, finding that the Council’s practice of not permitting the subject of a complaint to take part in the investigation put disabled employees, including Ms Griffiths, at a particular disadvantage. It also upheld her claim of unfair constructive dismissal. At the remedy hearing, the ET awarded Ms Griffiths her full loss of earnings as compensation for the discrimination, rather than limiting her to the unfair dismissal cap, concluding that the discriminatory treatment and the eventual dismissal were so closely connected that the resulting loss could not realistically be separated. However, the ET refused to award any compensation for future loss of earnings, reasoning that Ms Griffiths was likely to find suitable work soon, and it assessed her pension loss using a simplified calculation rather than the recognised method for defined benefit schemes, despite Ms Griffiths having provided expert evidence supporting the more detailed approach.

On appeal, the EAT agreed that the ET had been entitled to award full loss of earnings for the discrimination claim, finding no error in the way it had applied the established test of whether the loss flowed “directly and naturally” from the discriminatory act. However, the EAT held that the ET had erred in refusing future loss of earnings, since it had failed to properly assess what Ms Griffiths could actually earn in any alternative role, particularly given that the job she had been offered paid considerably less than her previous salary. The EAT also found that the ET had erred in its approach to pension loss, having failed to properly consider the Employment Tribunals’ own guidance on calculating such loss. The case was sent back to the same Employment Tribunal to reassess both issues.

This case shows that employers cannot assume that a one-off discriminatory act will only ever lead to a modest award. Where discrimination is followed, sometime later, by a resignation or dismissal, an employer may still be liable for the full financial fallout if the two are closely connected. It also serves as a reminder that, once liability has been found, compensation must be properly and carefully reasoned, particularly when assessing future losses and pension entitlements, or the award risks being overturned on appeal.