27 June (Part 2) - Thames Innovation Centre (TIC)
Tomorrow
will be the first day of the claim for unfair dismissal at Ashford Employment
Tribunal brought by the whistleblower at Bexley council’s Thames Innovation Centre.
The whistleblower is still reluctant to have her name mentioned here because she
wishes to distance herself as much as possible from what has been going on down
there, she is apprehensive of reprisals. I shall call her B.
B worked at the Civic Centre as a temp but when the receptionist at TIC walked
from her desk one morning and never came back, B was drafted in to fill the
vacancy. Within a few months she had done so well that she was offered a
permanent position on Bexley’s staff roll. She became aware of a love triangle
among the staff there which she might well have accepted except that she was
concerned that one of those involved was misdirecting post in favour of one of
the others and that it was known that huge sums of money were going astray. B
was worried that the events were linked and reported her concerns to her line
manager but within days he was arrested by the police amid allegations of child
pornography being found on his office computer.
One would have thought that the line manager might be suspended pending the
police investigation but Bexley council decided to keep him on full time despite
there being a mother and baby unit within TIC to which mothers inevitably bring
their older children too. Bexley council still refused to suspend the alleged
paedophile even after the police charged him. In fact he pleaded guilty to the
charges but Bexley council never did see fit to sack him. He eventually
resigned. Meanwhile B voiced her disquiet about the situation , her career took
a dive and she was eventually sacked.
The stated reason for B’s sacking is not of course the fact that she was unhappy
that Bexley council employed a paedophile in a building frequented by babies and
young children, nor that she was concerned that letters and possibly money was
being siphoned out of the system but that she was slow to provide personal ID as required
by employment law and that she had not kept a rack of brochures and similar
papers well stocked. What will happen tomorrow is unknown but I did notice that
although B supplied the ID documentation later than at first asked she did
supply it well within the extended time scale she requested and was granted.
Given that she was officially excused the delay (for which there was a
reasonable explanation) I can’t see how it becomes a sackable offence. The
responsibility for the brochure rack is not mentioned in any job description so
that is a bit of a grey area.
Bexley council claims that it gave permission for post to be siphoned off
through unusual channels so B was making a fuss over nothing. If that is true one must wonder why no one told B.
Having examined the papers I conclude that B may well have been unfairly
dismissed. That’s not me of course, I would never attempt to prejudge a legal case especially
one where one side can afford an expensive barrister and the other can afford
nothing. Those words were extracted from Bexley’s own papers, once stated by one
of B’s managers and again by those who dismissed B’s appeal.