A HAIRDRESSER has won a payout of almost £90,000 after she was “effectively demoted” to cleaning and making tea after she told her employer she was pregnant.

Kayleigh Flanagan eventually quit her job and took her employer to an employment tribunal claiming constructive unfair dismissal.

Ms Flanagan said that she noticed an “immediate change of attitude towards her” after she told employer Amy Jury of her pregnancy.

She said that her employer began to look for ways to criticise her performance and also removed her regular customers from her, a written reserved judgment said following a hearing in Cambridge.

It said that Ms Flanagan “had the majority of her hairdressing duties removed from her by Ms Jury” and “as a result we found most of the duties she carried out were those of an apprentice, ie cleaning and making tea, and we found she was effectively demoted.”

Ms Flanagan worked for the salon as a “senior stylist/technician” from June 2019 to November, 2021, and began her legal action against Envy Hair and Beauty in July 2020.

Her employment ended when she resigned.

Ms Flanagan had announced her pregnancy to her employer in a text message in December 2019.

Ms Flanagan was given a final written warning after a disciplinary hearing in January 2020, in relation to “alleged poor customer service and for being rude to a client.”

This was overturned following an appeal meeting and was substituted with a first written warning.

In February, 2020, Ms Flanagan complained that she had been removed from the online booking system and that there had been no risk assessment in relation to her pregnancy, the written reserved judgment said.

Ms Flanagan’s maternity leave began in April 2020.

She said that she had “no choice but to resign” and considered this to be constructive dismissal, stating that her “mental health has seriously deteriorated, so that I now fear for my safety as well as that of my family.”

A written judgment said that the complaint of unfair dismissal was “well-founded” and the claimant “was constructively unfairly dismissed.”

It ordered that the respondent should pay Ms Flanagan £89,849.