Breach Of Contract?

GQ007

I wondered if this would be considered as breach of contract:

I was offered a position within a hospital, and received a letter confirming this, subject to occupational health and reference clearances. (Both of these were cleared). This letter confirmed pay, holiday entitlement, hours, etc.
The letter specified that I was allocated a recruitment advisor.

This recrutiment advisor, had been very difficult to contact, and he would promise to call me but only on one occasion managed to do so. For some reason the occupational health clearance took longer than necessary, and the advisor did not seem to know what to do, so I contacted them direct, and was told it was their error, that I had not been put on the "database", as I was cleared, the person did this straight away, and I informed the recruitment advisor. He also said that the references had not been received and I chased both of these and they both confirmed that they had been sent.

In essence my last conversation with the recruitment advisor, was that I would get back to him with my potential start date, after tendering my resignation (I had not wanted to do this until both occupational health and references were received).
Once the resignation was accepted I tried to contact the recruitment advisor, who would not answer my emails, or phone calls, after 2 weeks of trying I managed to track down the person who interviewed me, who informed me that the post had been withdrawn as the "budget was not funded for the position", and that the job offer was not available any more.
At this point she stated that the 2nd reference according to HR had not been received, which was untrue, as I had taken the liberty to contacting them, and she confirmed that she had been asked twice to provide the information, as the 1st request sent had been "lost".
This has now left me in a predicament, as I am now out of a job, I have had to put in a claim for job seekers allowance.
I wondered if I am able to classify this as a breach of contract?

I have the information regarding the withdrawal of the post in writing - via emails, and the person who interviewed me said she would forward the email correspondence to the HR departement and the recruitment advisor - but I have heard nothing since 4/11/2009.

Any advise would be appreciated.

GQ007

Kayl06

If you never started the job they can do whatever they like.

I had a similar problem back in April, offered the job, signed the contract, had CRB and references back only to be told a few months later that the job was no longer available.

They didn't even have the decency to contact me telling me about it, it was only because i emailed them asking what was going on and why it was taking so long that i was told. No apologies either.

The worst thing was they kept my birth certificate until the end of July and wouldn't reply to my emails about it, very annoying as i needed it to apply for certain jobs.
Never going for a job with them again.

jazzyman01

The problem is that the offer was subject to references and occ clearance. You confirm that the occ clearance was acknowledged as complete but that they state they did not receive one of the references. This obviously could be a ploy.
You can ask for the payment of the notice period and state that you will submit an ET claim if this is not received. You should get a written signed statement from the people that supplied your references stating that did comply. They may well make a payment just to prevent an ET claim.

cymraes1_2

:money:I dont know where else to post this thread sorry~!
I have been registered on the starsinmyeyes.tv website for some time, but it will not let my apply for any of the advertised jobs, etc as I am not a premium/paying member, Does anyone know anything about this website? whether they are genuine or not ig letting you apply if you pay the registation fee for ther premium use? I am awar that agencies are not supposed to charge, but its paying for the weebsite access in this case

GQ007

Thanks for the replies so far. I have written confirmation regarding the reference they say they did not receive. I emailed the person in question and made sure I had this in writing before contacting the person who interviewed me.

Jazzy can you confirm what an ET claim is? Sorry to be so thick, I am absoutely bewildered by this whole thing, I was so looking foward to starting this new position, as it would have meant a much higher salary, and would have helped me to sort out a few debt issues.

jazzyman01

So sorry GQ007 - ET claim is employment tribunal - usual place to go when you have a claim relating to employment.

zzzLazyDaisy

Hi, sorry to hear about your bad experience - it happens a lot more often than you might imagine, and unfortunately there is very little come-back on the employer in this situation (unless of course the withdrawal of the job offer is for a reason related race, sex, disability, or some other unlawful reason, which does not seem to be the case here).

I suppose the first thing to consider is whether your previous employer is willing to consider taking you back on?

As regards the prospective employer, the question is, do you have any right to be compensated for your losses as a result of their actions?

There are really two questions to consider here......
1. Do you have any contractual rights at all?

This will depend on whether you have entered into a binding contract with the new employer. If the offer was made conditional on something - in your case, receipt of satisfactory references - or CRB check for example – then if those pre-requisites have not been fulfilled, you almost certainly don’t have a binding contract. But if the conditions have been met and you have agreed the main terms of employment – salary, start date, working hours, location etc. – and no-one had said anything to suggest that the offer is subject to some other condition and so may still be withdrawn, then your new employer is probably in breach of contract. It doesn’t matter that you don’t yet have a written contract signed by both sides: there is nothing to say that a contract of employment has to be in writing.



You have a problem here because the new employer is saying it did not receive one of your references, so the pre-conditions were not fulfilled and in that case a binding contract never came into existence. So proving that a) they received the reference and b) that it was satisfactory to them would be your first big problem.

2. How much will you get in compensation?

But let's suppose you could show that you did in fact have a binding contract. You might think you’d be entitled to substantial damages. After all, if your employer hadn’t withdrawn the offer in breach of contract, you’d be earning in a new job by now, and probably expecting to stay in it for some time. As it is, you’re unemployed and earning nothing. That’s potentially quite a lot of money you’ll have lost before you find another job.



Unfortunately, when employees have tried to argue that they should be compensated for what they would have earned if their contracts had not been unlawfully terminated, the courts have always held that they are limited to what they would have received if their contracts had been lawfully terminated. See Lavarack v Woods; Janciuk v Winerite Ltd. Lawful termination means termination on whatever the contractual notice period is, so damages will be limited to pay during the notice period. That will be one of the terms which was agreed as part of the contract but unless you are very senior, this could be as little as a week, or probably a month at best.


In simple terms you cannot get more than you would have been entitled to if the employer had terminated your employment within the first few days of the contract because the funding had been withdrawn. Under general law an employee is not entitled to notice in the first month. So you must look to the contract and see what it says about notice.



Assuming that you had a contract setting out the notice requirements, then if you wish to pursue this you would need to write to the new employer pointing out that you consider that there was a binding contract in place and that you are entitled to be given lawful notice under that contract, and that if they fail/refuse to comply with the notice requirement under the contract, then you will make a complaint to an employment tribunal.


You can make a complaint to the ET online. There is no fee. Your claim would be breach of contract for failure to give contractual notice.


However, in my view, your prospects of success in such a claim would be poor, because you would have great difficulty getting over the first hurdle - ie proving that the new employer received your reference and considered it to be satisfactory.


Sorry this is probably not what you want to hear, but good luck in whatever you decide to do.


Daisy

LittleVoice

cymraes1 wrote: »

:money:I dont know where else to post this thread sorry~!
I have been registered on the starsinmyeyes.tv website for some time, but it will not let my apply for any of the advertised jobs, etc as I am not a premium/paying member, Does anyone know anything about this website? whether they are genuine or not ig letting you apply if you pay the registation fee for ther premium use? I am awar that agencies are not supposed to charge, but its paying for the weebsite access in this case

Without looking at the website, I don't know whether it is legitimate or some sort of scam.
Whilst normally agencies should not charge for registration or finding you work, I believe there is an exemption for theatrical agencies.

GQ007

CYMRAES1 - I think you should have started your own thread. Now we have people answering both our queries on this thread and they are not related.

ZzzLazyDaisy - thank you so much for your insight. I will plow on with the ET claim. As the recruitment advisor, accepted verbally that both the occupational health and references were satisfactory - which is the premise of me tendering my resignation.

Thanks again, for your input and the others who have contributed thus far.

ohreally

Was this through an agency or with the hospital directly?

Oldernotwiser

LittleVoice wrote: »

Without looking at the website, I don't know whether it is legitimate or some sort of scam.
Whilst normally agencies should not charge for registration or finding you work, I believe there is an exemption for theatrical agencies.

I assumed that this was spam, so I've reported it.