A convicted paedophile has won compensation of over £30,000 after bringing a redundancy claim action against his former employers from his prison cell according to the Daily Mail.
Robert Wills took his former employers RWE NPower to an Employment Tribunal following their refusal to pay him a redundancy claim settlement in light of his sentence for child pornography.
The former employee of a power station in Didcot, Oxfordshire, was being made redundant at the same time as he was forced to admit making indecent images of children.
After discovering his prison sentence in the local paper, his employers cancelled a redundancy package and suspended his holiday pay, arguing that he had “frustrated” his employment contract by being unavailable to work.
However, the Citizens Advice Bureau, acting on behalf of Mr Wills, argued that as he was going through a redundancy process and was on agreed leave at the time, and had not been expected to return to the plant before his job came to an end, he was not actually in breach of his contract and therefore there was no frustration.
Mr Wills’ representative also argued that his two-year prison sentence related to indecent images of children was not connected to his employers, and therefore he had no moral or legal duty to tell them about his criminal conviction.
The Employment Tribunal Judge found in favour of Mr Wills stating that “imprisonment does not automatically end the employment.
“In this case the Claimant was not expect to enter work, whether in prison or out, before the contract of employment expired. He was on leave. Whether the Claimant was in Bullingdon Prison or in Benidorm, it made no difference to the contract of employment”.
As a result of Mr Wills not being required to work, and the contract not being frustrated, he was awarded £5,850 in statutory redundancy, £1,731 as holiday pay and £24,953 for breach of contract.