Other legal routes to protection

Employees with at least two years’ service who are dismissed because of their mental ill-health but whose condition does not amount to a disability may be able to claim unfair dismissal in the employment tribunal under section 98, Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA 96). There is information about employees’ rights to claim unfair dismissal for ill-health in LRD’s annual employment law guide Law at Work (www.lrdpublications.org.uk/lawatwork).

Employers also owe important contractual duties that impact on employees’ mental health, such as the duty of trust and confidence and common law duties not to cause reasonably foreseeable psychiatric harm.