Employment contract

A. There are many reasons why resigning and claiming constructive unfair dismissal in this situation would be a very poor idea.

Just for starters, even assuming you can prove that your line manager promised you a pay rise, it is likely that a tribunal would decide that you and your line manager had no “intention to create legal relations” during your Christmas party discussion. In other words, it is very unlikely that the tribunal would find that your discussion resulted in a legally binding variation of your employment contract.

Tribunals must look at all the surrounding circumstances to decide whether the parties intended their actions to have legally binding effects, but the test is always objective.

The fact that you privately believed your line manager to be making you a binding promise is neither here nor there. What matters is how things would have appeared to a reasonable third party outside observer.