Restaurant dismissal ‘not due to pregnancy’

A tribunal has not accepted a claim that a woman was unfairly dismissed from award-winning Thornton’s Restaurant for being pregnant.

In the ruling, the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) found Thornton’s was “struggling to survive in a difficult market” in early 2014, when Aisling Neidhard was made redundant.

Celebrity chef Kevin Thornton, whose restaurant had a Michelin star for two decades, until 2015, owns and runs the restaurant with his wife and business partner, Muriel Thornton.