A mother of two who miscarried while under stress after her employer refused flexitime working may receive more than £100,000 compensation.

Nicola Adedeji’s request to rearrange and reduce her hours at one of London’s most famous arts venues, to look after her children, was rejected by “stubborn” managers.

Mrs Adedeji, 42, a house manager, had worked for the Barbican Centre for 11 years. She had asked to work a double shift two days a week. The Barbican said that her job was too demanding to be done in any way apart from full-time and terminated her contract last August.

Yesterday a panel at the Central London Employment Tribunal upheld her claims of indirect sex discrimination and unfair dismissal against the centre’s owner, the City of London Corporation.

Mrs Adedeji, from Palmers Green, North London, had been earning about £30,000 a year and has been told that she could be awarded more than £100,000 damages. She told the tribunal that she felt she had been betrayed by senior management.

She and her husband James, a civil servant at the Department of Health, have an eight-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.

The tribunal was told that she first made a request for flexible working hours in the summer of 2006 after her mother had an accident and was no longer able to look after the children. In October that year Mrs Adedeji became pregnant with a third child.

“My husband and I were thrilled with this news. We both come from large families and it had always been our intention to have more children,” she told the hearing. She had suggested a job share and asked for four weeks’ leave for November but was turned down.

She said: “I was devastated I had not been granted any leave for November as I simply had no one to look after my children. I became extremely upset and was physically sick. I just could not believe the situation.

“I was not sleeping or eating properly and I was irritable and very emotional. My GP diagnosed work-related stress and gave me a sicknote for two weeks.”

Ten weeks into her pregnancy, Mrs Adedeji miscarried. She tearfully told the tribunal: “In the early hours of October 31, 2006, I suffered a miscarriage. I had to be taken to hospital by my husband. I was devastated by the miscarriage, as was my husband.”

While she had originally claimed that the centre’s rejection of her request for flexitime had contributed to her miscarriage, she later withdrew the allegation. Mrs Adedeji told the tribunal that the Barbican’s house managers worked two shift times, one starting at 7.30am and the other ending at 11.30pm, seven days a week. She said: “Most childminders are not prepared to start that early or finish that late.”

Her husband applied for flexible working hours in his job but by the autumn of 2006 the couple were dependent on friends and parents of their children’s schoolmates to look after the youngsters until they could collect them in the evenings.

Mrs Adedeji said that she had been confident that her request to work a double shift on two fixed days a week would be granted. She said: “I was really shocked as I had thought it was a reasonable request. I knew I had the backing of my fellow house managers and I had proposed something that, in my opinion, worked within the house managers’ rota.”

After she was signed off sick, Mrs Adedeji was told by her managers that she would be expected to work full-time on her return. In June she was told that her contract would be terminated.

In a statement, the Barbican said: “The Barbican works hard to accommodate childcare and flexible working needs while also ensuring that there is sufficient staff cover seven days a week, 18 hours a day.”

A hearing to decide Mrs Adedeji’s compensation award will take place in March.

Explore Law

• Columnists

• Law Panel

• Law Reports

• Student Law

Times Recommends

• BGC 'set aside £40m to lure Tullett brokers'
• Legal aid review to ensure value
• Fears as 21 magistrates' courts face closure