Continuity of employment: Continuity not preserved during "child-break" absence

Key points

• In Curr v Marks & Spencer plc 13.12.01 Court of Appeal the Court of Appeal holds that an employee who took a four-year break from work under her employer's "child-break scheme", after which she was re-engaged, had not been absent from work in circumstances such that "by arrangement she was regarded as continuing in the employment" during that break when no contract of employment subsisted. Accordingly, her period of continuous employment, for the purpose of calculating the statutory redundancy payment to which she was entitled, commenced on her return to work after her child-break.