When are you legally required to allow an employee to withdraw their resignation?

How would you deal with this scenario? A long-standing employee who has been grumbling about their pay for some time tells their manager that they are resigning to pursue more lucrative opportunities. That employee then tells other people they are leaving and approves the announcement which goes out to the rest of the business. Then, three weeks later they ask to rescind their resignation because, they say, it was made in haste during a mental health crisis. 

Those are the broad facts in Bradley v The Royal Mint Ltd. In that case the employer refused to allow the employee to withdraw their resignation, and she alleged that this failure amounted to disability discrimination.

Facts

Mrs Bradley started working for The Royal Mint in 2009, most recently as Director of HR. She suffered from depression and anxiety, and from January 2022 was diagnosed with ADHD. Her employer was aware of these conditions. 

When she was ill she was prone to becoming impatient and having emotional outbursts. She had resigned during previous “meltdowns”: the first happened in 2019 and the second in 2021. Her manager recognised that she was unwell on both occasions and did not accept her resignations.

Mrs Bradley was prescribed medication for her ADHD in March 2024. She decided to come off her anti-depressants and this, combined with getting used to new medication, had a significant impact on her. She had suicidal thoughts and went into extreme rages. But, generally, she was able to successfully mask how she was really feeling at work. 

At the beginning of May she became very upset at work and had to take a few days off. She told her manager that her “mania was over” and that she was just exhausted. She returned to work and, outwardly, appeared to be normal.

During a routine meeting with her manager on 15 June, Mrs Bradley said that she was resigning to pursue opportunities to earn more money. Her manager believed that she had thought through her decision and accepted her resignation. A week later she told some colleagues that she was leaving and approved the announcement about her departure which was sent to the rest of the business. On 27 June she put her resignation in writing and confirmed that she intended to work her notice period. 

Then on 4 July, Mrs Bradley messaged her manager asking for help. During a meeting she asked to rescind her resignation and when that was refused, she wrote to the leadership team (and the Board) in the following terms:

“Despite me informing the business at the beginning of this year of my ADHD disability, the lack of support and reasonable adjustments at work over the last 6 months, has caused me considerable stress, anxiety and deep depression, to the point of not wanting to be ‘here’ anymore. 

"My illness was further compounded yesterday by the business refusing to let me rescind my impulsive decision to resign, which due to the nature of my disability, was a decision made whilst being extremely ill and seeking psychiatric support to find the right combination of medication to treat my illness – an illness I have managed and ‘masked’ over the last 13 years of loyal and dedicated service at TRM, but has been become difficult, (but not impossible), to manage due to my late in life hormonal changes.”

The Royal Mint did not believe that her medical conditions had impacted her decision on this occasion and that she had resigned because she wanted to earn more money elsewhere. This was against a background of her complaining about her pay in 2018 and 2022 (which resulted in increases to her basic pay, which at the time of her resignation was around £122k). She was aware that she was unlikely to be offered further, significant increases going forward. 

She brought a number of claims, including that she had been treated unfavourably contrary to s15 Equality Act 2010.

Tribunal decision

There are two stages to a s15 claim. The first requires the claimant to establish that they have been treated unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of their disability. The tribunal accepted medical evidence which found that at the time of her resignation, Ms Bradley's mental state was significantly impacted by changes in her medication. This meant there was a link between Ms Bradley's disability and her resignation. 

The next stage of the s15 test requires a tribunal to evaluate whether the employer's treatment of their employee is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The legitimate aim put forward by The Royal Mint was that allowing a senior leader to rescind her resignation after it had been publicly announced would be “destabilising” for the rest of the workforce. The tribunal accepted that this was a legitimate aim but held that steps taken by the employer to achieve it were not proportionate because: 

•  it knew that Ms Bradley was attributing her “hasty” decision to resign due to her disabilities and should have taken steps to explore this
• it had decided that Ms Bradley's analysis wasn't true based on its own observation of her even though it was “not qualified to make that judgment” and had “closed its mind” to considering whether her mental health was a factor
• it should have paused and obtained proper, informed medical advice about the impact of her disabilities on her decision making and obtained an OH report before reaching a decision 

 What lessons can employers learn from this?

As a general rule, if an employee resigns using clear and unambiguous language, you are entitled to take it at face value. The courts, however, recognise that there may be circumstances where it is appropriate to investigate the context in which the words were spoken in order to ascertain what was really intended and understood. And, of course, if the words themselves are ambiguous, you must find out whether the employee intended to resign before taking any further action. 

You may also have to take into account an employee's mental state before deciding how to proceed. You will generally be expected to give an employee a short, cooling down period if they have resigned in the heat of an argument, in temper, or under extreme pressure. 

This case also demonstrates that you may need to go further than that if your employee has a disability which may have impaired their decision making. 

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