Croydon Employment Tribunal - change of venue

My hearing has now been changed to Croydon ET for 27th October 2008 but the witness statements will be read in private. I don't know if this is a good thing or not...less stress of reading out a long statement and juggling though lots of bundles...but a fair and public hearing?? who knows. I can't even speak my mind on this blog as big bullies have told the employment judge about it and have agreed to produce a hard copy to him on Monday morning. As its not a criminal trail surely big bullies are not going to try and say this is some sort of "contempt of court".

Witness statement - length

Yesterday my postie brought me two brown letters from the ET. Big bullies @ Bexley have written to ask the ET for an order that my witness statement be edited and reduced to be no more than 100 pages. I've replied that I think big bully's real problem is that they just don't like the fact that my evidence is compelling. They tried to strike out my claims and didn't get very far so now they are trying to shut me up by restricting me from giving evidence to prove the claims that weren't struck out. They are also trying to stress me out by saying I should change the order of the evidence in my statement from chronological order into subject order. I've asked the ET to order that Big bullies remove all the documents that neither party is referring to from the bundles of documents (7 lever arch files full) so that we can easily get to the ones we are referring to. Bexley is meant to be trying to conserve paper and reduce waste after all. I don't have much faith in the ET system, they seem to think that Big bully solicitors from Bexley must surely be acting reasonably and tend to agree with everything they say. I will have another stress filled week waiting to see what the ET says

Silence - Akyena case- risking miscarriage of justice

I made the whistleblowing allegation that my colleague SH interviewed Ms Akyena over the telephone on 11-11-04 without giving her a PACE caution as required. (thus risking a miscarriage of justice) I believed that this conduct may have been covered-up by solicitor Hamish Craig dishonestly switching a land registry document dated 2-11-04 (before the interview) for a fresh document which post-dated the interview to exhibit to SH's witness statement used for a prosecution of Ms Akyena for failing to declare an owned property on a homeless application. This fraudulent swapping of the documents would have had the effect of hiding SH's suspicion of an offence on 11-11-04 and also would have hidden the need for SH to have given Ms Akyena a PACE caution on that date. I believed this situation was covered-up by Senior Solicitor Guy Atkins looking at the case and finding nothing wrong with it; Deputy Head of Legal Services Mr Akin Alabi reviewing the case but not producing his reported findings and furthermore Assistant Director of legal services Mr Andrew Maughan ignoring every question that I asked about the case. I had never seen SH's final witness statement or exhibited land registry document so I thought this would be revealed in the document disclosure that took place a few weeks ago. Apparently the Akyena file could not be located. A request for an order of disclosure from the Employment Tribunal for Bexley to produce SH's statement and exhibits was also refused. The witness statements with exhibits would have shown whether the land registry documents had been fraudulently swapped. Despite the fact that I was called into meetings threatening me with disciplinary action every time I every time I emailed legal services with questions about this case, and alleged that those challenges ultimately resulted in my unfair dismissal, none of the Respondent's 13 witnesses have even mentioned the case in their statements of evidence. That will be quite a challenge for me at the hearing, I'm wondering how I will go about cross examining their witnesses about evidence that simply is not there.

Exchange of witness statements. The evil bitch was a rottweiler

I spent a couple of days printing off my long witness statement detailing my 3 year long dispute with Bexley Council and then met my daughter from school to effect the exchange as planned. When I arrived home I read avidly to see which lies my former colleagues were prepared to tell on oath at the Employment Tribunal in October . Jo Brown maintains that she called me an "evil bitch" in jest. Apparently this had some connection to her (allegedly) previously joking that I was like a rottweiler. I also (allegedly) thrived upon such insults!

Where I am working now

I currently work for Greenwich Housing Rights. With changes to the LSC funding arrangements and moves toward providing a "one -stop-shop" for advice agencies in the borough I don't know how long the job will last. At least the staff are honest, caring and hardworking. No corrupt practices, theft of resources, lying, cheating or "gagging" of speech here.

Redeployment refused - unappointable - poor communication skills

I was interviewed for the scientific officer job in January and met Jerry Toswell on 15th Jan. During the meeting he told me I was unappointable to the Scientific officer job and therefore my redundancy would take effect that day I asked him why I was not appointable and he said he’d need to speak to Kevin Murphey to find out why. No reason was supplied to me at all until I was given disclosed documents in August 2008. I was stunned to read that it was suggested I had poor communication skills!! I'll never be a creative writer but boring as this blog is, it will communicate some of the facts.

Selected for redundancy - what about a redeployment?

I had the competitive interview for my job with Gill B and was told on 30th November that it was me for the chop, surprise surprise. My local free newspaper was delivered early on 6th December on its publication date. I noticed Bexley were advertising a Scientific officer job. I was very surprised to see a job available in the same Development and Public protection department which I worked under. I worked under the Business sector which had about 22.5 FTE posts and this job was in the Environmental and Residential sector which had about 23.5 FTE posts. The sections were on the same floor of the same building and the open plan offices were adjacent to each other. I could not believe that Clive Cain would not have known about this vacancy when he had interviewed me on the 29th November. Clive would have surely had to liaise with managers from the other departments in the directorate when discussing any potential job losses across the whole department which had about 76.5 FTE staff. Moreover the redeployment policy stated that the employing directorate would take all reasonable steps to redeploy the staff member to an existing or identified future vacant post within their own control. Guess they hoped that I'd have flown off for my holiday as on the 6th December as planned and not known about this job until I returned when it was too late

A bit of co-operation would have been nice - document exchange

After that meeting Shaun Lane from legal services then sent me an e.mail at 11.05am referring to the cost of copying and to doing so outside of my core hours. I felt that he was being particularly uncooperative and that his agenda was to try and ensure that I would be unable to effect the exchange of documents that day instead of trying to make it possible. I was called into the office to see Clive Cain and Clive Watts on 22nd November 2006 and given a letter headed management instructions relating to the use of the council copier and printer. I reiterated it was the printer only that was involved not the photocopier. Clive Cain asked me if I had printed any e.mails from my e.mail account prior to being told not to do so on 20th November. I confirmed I had already printed some emails off. He asked how many pages I had already printed. I said I did not know, he then asked roughly how many. I said that I had not counted them as I had never imagined that I was not allowed to print them but that they would be identifiable as having the date of printing on the bottom of each e.mail as 20-11-06. I believe I had printed about 20-30 pages but it was clear he was prepared to give me a formal written instruction about my conduct without having any idea of the numbers of copies involved. I said that if he or legal services wanted to go through my bundle after it was completed to let me know how many pages I had printed that morning I would pay a reasonable charge for them but I would not be in a position to count them for myself for some time but could do so if necessary. Well its good to see the council swung into action so quickly to save less than £1 worth of paper - shame the management time doesn't come so cheap. Shaun Lane made the complaint (£60 per hour for his time) Sam Humphrey from HR drafted the letter, Kevin Murphy Head of Environmental Health ran round to speak to me urgently and the Head of Business Sector Clive Cain and Trading Standards manager Clive Watts handed the letter over to me. This must be what they mean by partnership working.

Employment tribunal - document exchange

I needed to print off some internal e.mails from my “Bexweb” e.mail account to complete a document exchange. It was rather annoying that Bexley had asked me to produce large numbers of documents that I was only in possession of because they had supplied them to me in the first place. It was extremely burdensome to have to copy so many of their own documents to return copies to them. Some documents had never been printed off at all from my email account but had only ever been seen by me as electronic documents. Maybe I had been too generous in my interpretation of the disclosure order and should not have listed documents that I had never had a physical copy of. I informed Shaun Lane in legal services that I needed to print off copies of documents before effecting the document exchange that day. Within about 5 to 10 minutes a manager from another department, Kevin Murphy, approached my desk and said he needed to speak to me urgently, this was in full view and hearing of my colleagues present in the office. He then took me to a meeting room and was stating that I must not use the photocopier for any correspondence connected with my tribunal claim as this was an office resource. He had neither seen me use a photocopier nor could he have had a complaint from any staff in my department because it was not the photocopier that I was using it was the printer. Kevin confirmed that legal services had complained to Human Resources who had instructed him to speak to me

Redundancy - skills in demand

I asked what skills had been identified as being those in demand once the work had reduced. I was told by Clive Cain the skill most needed was “ the ability to cope with the unexpected” he then went on to explain that the Senior Fair Trading Officers had demonstrated this at a recent fireworks raid. There was no explanation of how Gill or I were to be tested on this ability or how it would be measured. Apart from brief details of criteria for selection in a letter of 8-11-06 saying that relevant skills, experience and qualifications would be considered there was no other criteria produced to us prior to the selection.

Collective redundancy -different rules on consultation

I asked Jerry Toswell if the situation was a collective redundancy situation and he assured me that it was not. He said that less than 20 redundancies would take place within 90 days. The council's online monitoring report for 3-12-06 says “Staffing . The HR Service has provided extensive support to Directorates to enable them to achieve the expenditure reductions required. This has involved consultation with staff and representatives and application of the Council's HR procedures in order to effect 37 redundancies in the quarter. It therefore seems to me that there was a collective redundancy situation as more than 20 jobs were being made redundant in a 90 day period.

Oops - we we got the invoices mixed up- never mind, only 7 months late paying

On 14th November I had found a statement and an invoice face down on my desk from the TSI with no explanation with it. On 15th November I emailed Alan Ritchie to ask if he had left it there and if there was any relevance to the highlighting that was on the statement. The statement total was £628.64 and listed invoices for my TDA course on 5-6-06 and DCATS exams on 24-8-06. There was £499.39 outstanding for invoices incurred on my behalf. The TDA course fee was highlighted and by this time was over 120 days overdue. On 22nd November Alan confirmed that he had not highlighted the statement and on 23rd November I asked if the “late booking fee” had any relevance to me. Alan never answered this enquiry but I believe that he probably checked what that the late booking fee was for around this time and realised that it had no connection to the DCATS exams that Bexley had no intention of paying for and therefore authorised its payment. (paid 18-1-07)

Redundancy consultation -Gill B - what an angel agreeing to suggest a job share

On 2nd November my colleague Gill and I were told one of us would be made redundant. On 8th November Gill B and I discussed putting in a job share proposal to avoid redundancy. We both separately sent emails suggesting this to Clive Cain. If this had been a genuine redundancy situation I would have expected management to have been relieved that a job share proposal may have avoided the need to make the difficult decision of who would stay and who would go. I thought this would have prompted a meeting to discuss the job share proposals but instead all we received was a letter each saying how the consultation was going to be taken forward. We were then told that the next meeting would be held on 16th November with each of us separately despite the fact that we had both said at the previous meeting that we would like to attend the meetings together.
Gill was one of the angels at Bexley and deserves to work somewhere much better.

TSI put her in for the exams even though we didn't pay the invoice- now we'll have to tell her she's too dumb to sit them

On 12th October 2006 Alan Ritchie called me in to his office to have a chat with me. He produced an invoice for my DCATS exams which he said was received in the summer, I could not see the detail on the invoice but there was a large “X” handwritten on it. Alan said that he needed to inform me that Clive Cain the Head of the Department had blocked payment of the invoice because he did not consider me to be competent to complete the exams without undertaking a course of study first. I was dumbfounded as I was due to sit the exams in 3 weeks time. I said “but Alan we discussed all this ages ago when it was agreed for me to do the exams”. Alan replied “I think we must have been talking at cross purposes because what I was agreeing to was a course of study for the following year not for the exams this year”. I did not think that there was any way that we had spoken at “cross purposes” earlier in the year. Alan said he rather pay £2000 for a full course the following year than £260 for exams this year ...makes good financial sense? Don't worry good Council Taxpayers. I don't think he was really going to waste £2,000 in 2007, he clearly had his crystal ball out and knew I'd be made redundant by then and the council wouldn't have to pay a penny

Standards Board complaints go straight back to the council to investigate

On 22nd September 2006 I responded to David Hogan’s draft report in to my complaint against Cllr Pat Cammish. As Davis Hogan had investigated the use of Oswald Mensah’s property and found no breach of the rules I didn’t suppose he would find anything objectionable about Pat Cammish’s comments either. On 4th October he found that Pat Cammish had accepted she made an error of judgment in making the comments but had not breached the duty under Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) to promote racial equality. On 5th October the draft report had been passed to c Andrew Maughan and the final report was issued which was almost identical to the draft. How badly to people have to behave to break the rules? Photocopying a few sheets of paper on the works copier might be enough...watch this space

No answer to the allegations- no problem- we'll just re-write them

On 4th September 2006 I attended an ET Case management discussion where some of my claims were struck out. The racial harassment claim was struck out in its entirety The SDA victimisation claim against legal services was also completely struck out. In the strike out pleadings and in the oral presentation from Bexley my objection to the “warning paragraph” that legal services had drafted was falsely and misleadingly presented as though I had failed to caution my suspects, objected to an instruction to give my suspects a PACE caution and further that no reasonable worker could have considered a request to give a caution as a detriment. Bexley falsely and deliberately re-worded my claim under the guise of assisting the tribunal by saying
“Para 9 The claimant alleges that
(c ) on 21-6-2005 she was informed that her letters to landlords would be subject to a requirement to include a caution in accordance with the provisions of PACE
(d) she had requested that, in order to deal with her grievance in relation to the above matters, a barrister’s opinion be sought in respect of the need to give a PACE caution, but had been told by the respondent that it was not likely that such an opinion would be sought”
It was untrue that I was informed of the need to give a caution - I was directed to reproduce a paragraph drafted by Bexley Council which was not a requirement derived from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act to give a caution. It was untrue that I wanted an opinion on the need to give a caution.
Para 17 also used the words “requirement to include a PACE caution”And para 18 stated “Further no reasonable worker would consider that he or she
had been disadvantaged by the requirement to include the caution” This implied that I had been required to give a PACE caution and felt disadvantaged by this. It was untrue.

Bexley legal services know best - remote interviews are inadmissible no matter that there is evidence to the contrary

After Stephen Challis had been told that his interview by correspondence with Woolworths plc was not acceptable and could not be used in evidence I wrote to most of the local authorities in the South East of England with a Freedom of Information request asking if they interviewed their suspects remotely, either by telephone or by correspondence and asking if they had ever had such evidence ruled inadmissible by the courts. From replies from 13 of those councils; Surrey County Council, Camden Council, Reading Borough Council, Oxfordshire County Council, East Sussex County Council, Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, Greenwich Council, Wandsworth Council, Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, Tower Hamlets council, Hampshire Council and Buckinghamshire County Council a total of about 1000 remote interviews by correspondence and telephone had been conducted by their officers in the previous 3 year period. Evidence from those remote interviews had been used in court on around 430 occasions in the same time frame with no incidence of that evidence being ruled inadmissible. Mr Andrew Slee from Hampshire council said that he relied on the Direct Holidays v Wirral case as authority that the practice was acceptable and wrote that “I do not recall the last time that this practice, or reliance upon the answers given was challenged in court.” Similarly Neil Doling from Buckinghamshire County Council advised me that “we have never had a PACE interview by correspondence queried in court, let alone ruled out” I felt that Guy Atkins’s statements that my remote interviews and Stephen Challis’s remote interview were simply no good and would be inadmissible in a criminal court was unsupportable and were made without any foundation of facts to back those statements up.

No lack of probity- temp accommodations officer's property

I believe that the former temporary accommodation officer Oswald Mensah who was renting out his own property at 8 Pointer Close sold that flat on 7-7-06 for £128,000 If he received £60 per night from Bexley for its use as emergency accommodation for the period 13-9-04 to 8-3-05 he would have received £10,680 for that period. If he received £50 per night for the period 12-5-05 to 17-1-06 that would have been a further £13,550 so a total of £24,230 over a 16 month period. This was more than double the rate he would have expected to receive if the property had been privately rented and probably about triple that given for similar PSL properties. However Bexley investigated the use of this property and found there was no lack of probity in this deal. I suspect that after my questions about the deal the lucrative bookings may have stopped making it a less attractive proposition for him and causing him to sell the property. In the absence of any document disclosure from Bexley as to whether Oswald was informed he had breached the rules on disclosing a financial interest I can only speculate on this.

Trading Standards- Test purchasing - Woolworths plc - interview by letter

Many of the “test purchasing” exercises by trading standards take place in major retail chains where underage buyers try to purchase age restricted goods such as knives or alcohol. When a representative of the company needs to be interviewed about the offence and any “due diligence” defence the store representative is often based in a head office miles away, for example ASDA’s head office is in the North of England. It is therefore extremely common for officers to use interviews by correspondence to elicit the required information to decide if a prosecution is appropriate. To interview in person can be time consuming and expensive and some companies may refuse to attend an invitation for interview for this reason. A ban on the practice of interviews by letter would therefore have a detrimental effect on the ability to properly consider whether a prosecution was appropriate if representatives refused to attend a face to face interview in Bexley’s offices. If the relevant information on “due diligence” was not available to the prosecuting local authority until a court hearing it could be raised as a surprise in defence and if successful would mean the prosecution process was a waste of time and money. Bexley council’s prosecution of Woolworths plc for sale of a knife to an underage buyer was heard at Bexley Magistrates court on or around 5th December 2006. It is my belief that the interview by correspondence relating to the “due diligence defence” was not relied on as a result of the legal advice from Guy Atkins. The prosecution then failed as Woolworth’s due diligence defence was raised at trial and succeeded so they were found not guilty. This was clearly a matter of public interest as it was subject to reports in the press at a later date on the issue of knife crime http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/search/display.var.2406873.0.shops_caught_out_in_knife_test_purchases.php

Woolworth's sale of knife - unsucessful prosecution

On 28th June Tina Gibbons informed me that she had been to a meeting with legal services along with Stephen Challis and Clive Watts because Guy Atkins from legal services was complaining that Stephen was relying on a PACE interview by correspondence in a prosecution request for Woolworths plc. Woolworth’s had sold a knife, an age restricted product, to an underage test purchaser and the answers to the questions sent in an interview by letter from Stephen made him believe the store would not succeed with a due diligence defence. Legal services had suddenly said the interview by correspondence was not acceptable as the evidence was inadmissible. Stephen told me he had often interviewed suspects by correspondence and he had never known the practice to be challenged by legal services. I believe that Guy Atkins had felt that he had to issue the advice on “inadmissibility” to Trading Standards in order to make his advice to them appear consistent with the advice that he had previously given to me about telephone interviews. All the while that I had complied with the gagging clause Guy Atkins hadn’t issued any fresh advice to Trading Standards but as soon as I revealed the inconsistent advice he had then immediately objected to the practice of interviews by correspondence in Trading Standards. I had anticipated that this would occur and that it would make me unpopular and my position untenable in Trading Standards.

Lies and more bullying of Rita Grootendorst

At the February FTAW appeal in respect of maladministration of my work by legal services I had said I waited 5 months for legal services to spend 5 hours drafting a criminal witness statement for the Carpenter prosecution. In FTAW interviews Guy Atkins had explained this away by saying that “legal provide a greater input on housing cases than on cases for any other department. They do not generally interview witness and draft witness statements for any other department.” I therefore added a fresh comparator to rebut those comments by producing a witness, Mrs Rita Grootendorst, to the FTAW appeal on 28-2-06. I reiterated that comparator at the members appeal on 26-6-06. I said the Grootendorst case demonstrated that Mr Atkins’s comments were not true. She had been in a dispute with Bexley council who wanted to evict her and others from a community group from an allotment plot. Guy Atkins had drafted all the witness statements on behalf of the parks department for this dispute which was civil and not criminal. FOI requests that I made showed that Guy Atkins had spent 174 hours and 42 minutes on the case with other legal officers spending a further 66 hours on the case, giving a total of 240 hours 42 minutes. On 9th March 2005 the Guardian published an article on the case www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/mar/09/localgovernment.guardiansocietysupplement which included the comments “The council has been accused of "bullying", by Methodist minister, the Rev Mike Williams; being "heavy handed", by Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker, who visited the allotment last year; and of pursuing a "personal vendetta" against Grootendorst”. When I raised the comparator again at the 26-6-06 hearing, I said I there had been no explanation of why this low value civil case had been pursued so strongly when my criminal cases were neglected by the same solicitor, Mr Guy Atkins. The appeal panel then seemed to invent their own reasons for the delay on my cases by repeatedly suggesting that Mr Atkins may have been put under political pressure by councilors to proritise a case against the Grootendorsts. However the FTAW appeal guidance expressly advised them to look only at the evidence in front of them and not rely on personal experiences to make their decisions . Mrs Grootendorst subsequently used the FOI replies I had obtained by giving them to Andrew Snowball who produced the TV program “Don’t Get Done, Get Dom” which featured her dispute with Bexley council. Andrew used the information from the FOI replies to highlight the time and money wasted by legal services on the dispute. When the programme was broadcast soon after that Bexley Council would have been well aware that the information on costs had originated from my FOI requests which would have given them even more reason to want to retaliate against me

The (un)Fair Treatment at work appeal

On 26th June 2006 I attended the FTAW 2nd appeal hearing before councilors. In my SDA victimisation claim against legal services I raised the comparator prosecution of the Sk****s in which S R had written to the suspect and elicited a response in a letter sent without a PACE caution. I circulated copies of the letters one dated 3-8-99 was from S to the suspect and one dated 5-8-99 was the reply from the Sk****s to S. I also raised the issue that a further letter was sent to S from the Sk****s on 14th Feb 2000 telling him that a civil claim against them on the same facts as the intended prosecution had been struck out and I began circulating this saying it had not been included on the CPIA disclosure schedule in breach of the duty to do so. Jerry Toswell was a senior member of Human Resources and he should have immediately recognised this statement as a whistle blowing allegation. He immediately objected to any of the panel members taking the information into account despite the fact that I had outlined a summary of the Sk****e case as a comparator in the FTAW information. When copies of the notes of the meeting were produced in August 2008 I saw a 4 line gap in the notes at this point except the word “paperwork” and seriously wonder if parts of the original notes had been removed without any acknowledgment that this has been done.

Don't pay her Trading Standards exam fees, then she can't do them

On 5th June 2006 the Trading Standards Institute issued an invoice to Bexley Council for the cost of my Trade Description Act course with additional late booking fee. This was invoice number 18998 and was simply described as late booking fee and was for £235.01. This invoice would have arrived at Bexley council a few days later so at least by around 10th June 2006. I believe that mangers who should have authorised the payment of this course mistakenly believed that it was the DCATS examinations fee for my exams and that they deliberately did not pay the invoice hoping that I would then not be entered for the November DCATS exam sitting. The TDA course fee at £235 was in a similar price range as the DCATS exam fees which were £264 . No enquiry was made in the department about what the late booking fee was for or who had incurred it despite there being only 7 members of staff in Trading Standards who could have incurred that fee. On each successive statement sent to Bexley Council from the TSI the outstanding TDA course fee would have been listed until its eventual payment over 7 months later on 18-1-07. I think they didn't pay them so that I would look less qualified on a "sham" redundancy selection that was on the horizon.

Interviews by phone and letter are admissable in criminal evidence

On 6th June 2006 I attended a Trade Descriptions Act course run by Eddie Furniss and he gave out a handout of court cases. One of the cases was a trading standards prosecution that had gone to appeal in the High Court sitting as a Divisional Court on the issue of whether an interview was admissible in criminal evidence if it had been conducted by correspondence. That case was Direct Holidays v Wirral MDC [1998] EWHC Admin 256 (28th April 1999) http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/1998/456.html&query=direct+and+holidays&method=boolean and the interview was found to be admissible. I was then told about the case of MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and food) v Woodgate Sawmills Ltd . Divisional court (2001) 165 JPN34 In which the point of appeal was whether a telephone interview was admissible and it was held that it was. I subsequently found that LACORS also holds and publishes the view that remote interviews are admissible. www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/36455 LACORS stands for Local Authority Coordinators of regulatory services and aims to ensure consistent regulatory practices by different authorities in the UK.

She'll soon get fed up of working here.

During my first fortnight in Trading Standards I was taken along to a garage to assist with a petrol sampling exercise. This was mainly a fetching and carrying job to assist with a weights and measures task that Stephen was doing. Whilst I was helping to carry containers of petrol Stephen noticed that I did not have reinforced shoes on. Nobody had issued me with any or with a fluorescent jacket and there were no spare sets. As soon as Stephen noticed my inadequate footwear he said that I must stop helping on that task on health and safety grounds as he was responsible for me. That decision was unquestionably correct but what was wrong was that nobody had made any attempt to advise me of the equipment needed beforehand. I therefore stood around like a spare part for the remainder of the task. I was not given any suitable document wallet to carry advice leaflets to premises in and was not given any “credentials” to give me authority to inspect premises for months and only then after I had complained about the situation. I was not given a working mobile phone for months. I had the impression that C W was hoping that after 3 months of boredom I would elect to return to the housing department. When I did ask for work to do I was given data entry tasks and even asked to correct the punctuation on a document at one stage which were tasks well below my abilities.

Speak no evil

Before my appointment to the Fair Trading Officer post I had referred to searching for the truth of Mr Atkins's assertions about interviews by correspondence and by telephone. Sam Humphrey clearly took this comment quite literally and in my appointment letter directed that “This role does not require you to spend time looking through old files or collating evidence about working practices. It is therefore not appropriate to do so unless specifically asked by your line manager. Case files are confidential and should not be accessed by any unauthorised person or for unauthorised reasons” I had meant discussing the issue with other officers and had not actually considered the possibility of deliberately searching for the documented interview by correspondence records that would be held in the department and which I believed would show Mr Atkins to be a liar.

Redeployment to Trading Standards- gagging clause

On 16th Feb 2006 I was sent a letter confirming my redeployment to Trading Standards. This letter stated that it may be deemed a disciplinary offence if I made detrimental comments about legal services and that I should not discuss the details of my complaints. I felt that this condition effectively gagged me from asking Trading Standards officers whether or not they had been “consistently advised” not to conduct PACE interviews by correspondence as claimed by solicitor Guy Atkins.

Monitor her computer usage

As I was leaving the building with a carrier bag and box with plants in it I passed Jo Brown, G F and Diana Fawcett who were walking towards me. Jo and G totally ignored me and only Diana had the courtesy to say “hello”. In subsequent document disclosure I discovered the precise times of the 15 minutes I had used the computer had been monitored.

Make sure she has no evidence - lets empty her desk

On 18th January 2006 Diana Fawcett circulated an e.mail under the heading office accommodation, health and safety assessments, saying “thanks to everyone who has improved our offices so much by clearing out so much old paperwork and rubbish” I believe my desk was emptied sometime between New Year and this date to ensure I would not have access to documentary evidence I wanted to support my FTAW complaints and whistle blowing allegations. Jo Brown had asked SH to pass me a message that there was a bag of my things that had been tidied up in the office clear up that I needed to collect if I wanted to keep them and that staff were happy to keep on watering my plants if I wanted to leave them there. On 31st January 2006 I went to collect my belongings form work and to sort out my desk, I found that my desk had been totally emptied and every item had been removed from the drawers and surface of the desk. I was stunned and such was my disbelief that I kept reopening each drawer to be sure that there was nothing whatsoever left in there.

Refusal to agree training courses

My colleague was allowed to go on training but the same course was refused for me. Investigation results - Diana had introduced her own possible explanation of events relating to refusal of the immigration course without this suggestion ever being advanced by those she had interviewed during the investigation. Diana had suggested that it was too expensive for more than one person to attend the same course and that one person could share the information. She was clearly unaware that G, Jo and one assessment officer had been booked onto the identical course when it ran (I believe) on 11th May 2005 and in addition that neither G or Jo had thought to suggest that an “in house” course might be more cost effective on that occasion. Bexley have failed to disclose that course booking form. G had mentioned that I had raised the issue of the course “late in the day” this was simply untrue as it was raised weeks beforehand. G also raised the large number of training courses I had been on. From 25-6-01 to the training date I had attended 9 external courses ND had attended 8 external courses since joining the team in January 2005 and had had more approved for later in the year

See no evil

On 9th December 2005 I rang Bexley’s computer service provider, Steria, and raised a service request to ask if the racist and obscene “mama” e.mail sent to me and Jo Brown amongst others by P M that I had deleted at the time could be recovered from any archives. I was advised that if it had been received and deleted within the last 6 months it almost certainly could be recovered. I subsequently discovered that Steria had contacted Jo Brown for permission to recover that deleted e.mail and that she had initially refused to consent to it. When I rang Steria a few days later to chase the request I was informed that they could not go ahead with it without approval from my manager which had net been given.

"Unfit" for work

Sam Humphrey spoke to me, possibly on 17th October and said she was not happy with Dr T’s conclusion that I should not be signed off sick. She said that he had overstepped the boundaries as he had been asked to state whether I was sick or not and he should not have come up with an alternative decision (that I could be redeployed). She said she had spoken to her manager, Nick Hollier, and that he was going to speak to Dr T and tell him that he must either say I was sick or not, so I may as well just go to my doctor and get a sick certificate. I felt that in doing the Occupational Therapy referral Sam Humphrey had anticipated a result that I would be deemed “incapable of work” and that her plans had backfired as that was not the result she got and she clearly didn’t like the outcome that had occurred. I therefore felt that the referral was not based on my welfare but had been considered to be the means to the end of dismissing me from my job in response to me raising the whistle blowing issues

Whistleblowing allegations - rule compliance

After I was accused of sending am inappropriate email to legal services asking why the case of Bexley v A was prosecuted using inadmissible evidence I was threatened with disciplinary action. Why was this when everybody else's misconduct was ignored? I wrote out a whistleblowing complaint about the misconduct of other employees. Maybe nobody had noticed it. I met Sam to discuss the whistle blowing issues on 13th October 2005 and initially she suggested that I might want to take back what I’d written and not put up with the difficulties that were obviously going to occur. I said I wanted my comments to stand as I believed they were true. Sam had printed off the email and pushed it across the desk towards me asking if I wanted to take it back and if I was sure I wanted the consequences. She said that she had recently been studying “rule compliance” and I obviously fell at one end of the spectrum by being very rule compliant whereas it was also quite acceptable to be at the other end of the spectrum being non compliant. She said that those who were very rule compliant probably would have some difficulty working with those were at the opposite end of the spectrum and it may simply be a matter of having a more compromising attitude She said it was fine to be on either end of the spectrum but people from opposite ends would find working together difficult. I could not believe what I was hearing. I had been threatened with disciplinary action for breaching instructions not to send an email but the wrong doing I had highlighted was deemed to be alright and simply a matter of being “at one end of a rule compliance spectrum”.

"Pat didn't caution her supects" in a defamtion claim Bexley says that's not what this means.

On 4th August 2005 Diana gave me a document produced by Guy Atkins the previous day which I believed was defamatory as it was suggesting that I did not routinely give PACE cautions to suspects. Although it referred to the Housing Options Service (HOS) I felt it clearly meant me as I was the only person interviewing landlords. The statement was not true and would make me appear to be unprofessional. The objectionable words were “HOS has previously highlighted that, as a matter of policy, they were not cautioning landlords suspected of offences from the outset, because it was felt that this might hinder attempts to secure re-entry for the tenant. In short, the advice given by legal service (“LS”) was a failure to administer a caution risks any admissions made not being admitted in evidence (they would be excluded under PACE as having being obtained unfairly)” as that implied I had failed to caution my suspects. The words “Pat has queried whether failing to administer a caution under PACE is always fatal to the admissibility of evidence gathered as a result” and “The cases highlighted by Pat were not as fundamental as failing to issue the caution. The issue for HOS is that the failure to caution will not simply be the result of an error (which in itself is highly likely to render questions inadmissible) but as a result of a deliberate policy decision NOT to caution (an issue covered in the procedure note)” imply that I had tried to justify a failure to caution suspects which was untrue, they also imply I had failed to give a caution myself and had fundamentally breached the provisions of PACE and had a policy of not doing so. The words “Only HOS has been given this (relatively recent) advice. This is only as a consequence of other departments not (as far as I am aware) adopting the unusual approach of not cautioning suspected offenders at the outset (be it on site with contemporaneous notes or on a subsequent taped interview)” implied that I failed to caution my suspects.
If these words did not mean I failed to caution my suspects and had a policy of not doing so then What did they mean?

Racist texts

On 6th October 2005 P M sent me an offensive racist text message whilst I was just leaving work . It was not remotely funny. It said “They’ve just buried 5000 ni***rs under the New Orleans football stadium thus creating a new playing surface… AFFROTURF!!!
On 31st October I received a further racist text from P saying “What d’ya call an elephant with a spade? - Dawn French”

Racist emails circulating

Around 17th July 2005 P M sent a group email “joke” portraying a naked black man. The title was something like “Is it true what they say (about black men)” and then had a link to a photograph. The photograph had obviously been digitally altered to portray the man with an elongated p***is down to his knees to make him look ridiculous. In August 2005 she then sent a mail I think headed “mama” with a caption “What does mama look like?” clicking on a link brought up a full colour photograph of a naked obese black woman in bondage type black leather collar and cuffs and shackled in chains, sitting with her legs astride and also possibly with a black leather face mask with slits to show the woman’s eyes. It was obscene. I felt it was also racist as a white woman would not have been portrayed this way. It was clearly a parody of the idea of a homely fat black mama which to me would conjure up an image of a family woman sitting with her children round a cooking pot.

PACE interview by letter - Trading Standards

AM from Trading Standards showed me an example of a letter he had sent conducting a PACE interview by correspondence and said that the case had been successfully prosecuted by legal services without objection and that the solicitor with conduct of that case had been Mr Greg Sparling. The letter opened with words like “I am sorry about your recent bereavement, however we cannot delay our investigation any longer and there are questions that I need to ask you……” The letter then listed a set of questions followed by a PACE caution that the suspect could remain silent etc. I believe the letter may have been sent to a Mr Alan Tozer trading as Henley Classic Minis. Mr Guy Atkins was G S’s supervisor. When I asked if legal services had ever objected to these letters asking questions with a PACE caution A said he was sure they hadn’t and that the Trading Standards department often conducted interviews by correspondence. I felt legal services were being hypocritical in allowing Trading Standards to use PACE interviews by correspondence whilst telling me that telephone and correspondence interviews were both inadmissible.

Bexley v Ms A - telephone conversation no PACE caution

On 27th June 2005 my colleague S H’s case - Bexley v A was being prosecuted in Bexley Magistrates’ court. The solicitor for Bexley was Hamish Craig. When the charges were read out it was clear that one charge related to an initial homeless application taken face to face in October 2004 and the other charge related to comments made in a telephone interview with Ms A without any PACE caution from S H in breach of the PACE codes of guidance on 11th November 2004. I was stunned that Hamish had not withdrawn this second charge in light of the fact that legal services had advised me that evidence in my cases was likely to be inadmissible when I had obtained it from telephone conversations with a PACE caution. I had been given that advice a week earlier (21st June 2005) and Hamish had advised that in order to make my evidence admissible a further PACE interview had to be conducted with two warnings given to the suspect that the earlier evidence was likely to be inadmissible

Retaliation - the "warning pararaph" - Who's side were they on?

After I complained of the maladministration by legal services of my Protection from Eviction Act cases the more retaliation I received. False accusations were then made about my competence in dealing with my work under the guise of "legal advice". I'd given my suspect landlords cautions during telephone conversations to protect their rights but this was unjustly criticised. I was told to write to them and include a “warning paragraph” in the letter. The warning paragraph to be issued to suspect landlords said “I have already discussed some matters with you. In those conversations you made certain admissions. Because those admissions were not made in a formal interview that complied with all the formalities and requirements it is unlikely that any of what you said in those interviews would be admissible against you in court. The interview I am inviting you to in this letter will be a formal interview under caution which will be tape-recorded, and will comply with the legal requirements. In deciding whether you choose to attend the interview and if so, what answers you give to any questions (if any), YOU MUST NOT FEEL BOUND TO GIVE ANSWERS WHICH ARE CONSISTENT WITH ANYTHING YOU HAVE ALREADY TOLD ME IN PREVIOUS INTERVIEWS/CONVERSATIONS. As explained above, it is unlikely that those conversations/interviews will be admissible in evidence against you. If you are in any doubt as to your understanding of this point I would reiterate that you ought to seek your own independent legal advice, and show this letter to your solicitor.” I felt that this implied that my own investigations had been incompetent and that I had behaved improperly and that it was an act of humiliation to issue this statement. In addition I felt that it undermined my work as I felt it was tantamount to telling my suspects to feel free and come in to a second interview and dishonestly change their original account of events to a more favourable account or to fail to attend at all. That wasn't very supportive of my role in trying to uphold the law, was it?

Temporary accommodations officer rents property out in lucrative deal

I believe that Oz must have arranged for his property to have been rented out whilst meeting the proprietors in the course of his work or whilst receiving hospitality from them. If members of the public rang up to offer the council properties to use to house homeless people the possibility of use as emergency accommodation was not mentioned, owners of one bed roomed properties were directed to Ed Elston for the “Safelet scheme” and those with 2 or more were directed towards the Private Sector Leasing team. No other member of the public offering properties was put in touch with emergency accommodation providers and told that they may come to a private arrangement. Oz therefore benefited from his position as an employee of the council contrary to the code of conduct.

Conduct of staff - false housing waiting list application

On a date which I now believe was around March - April 2003 my colleague P M who was employed by Bexley Council as a temporary housing assistant, told me that she had submitted her own housing waiting list application form. Soon after that J and her colleague were discussing P’s home address in the allocations office and asked me if I knew where P lived, I said she lived in Thamesmead, to which J replied “we thought so.”. P later revealed to me that she had falsely completed the housing waiting list application and that she had been spoken to by mangers GF and PB about it. She stated that staff in the allocations department had realised that the form was false because they were aware that she lived with a partner in Thamesmead but that she had claimed to live with her grandmother in the East End of London in an property with insufficient space. The false address and circumstances would have improved her position on the housing waiting list. Although members of the public were prosecuted for similar offences P's form was destroyed and no enforcement action was taken. The council's enforcement policy says enforcement action will not be influenced "By contractual or other relationships with the council"

Maladministration by solicitors in legal services

In January 2003 I referred a case to legal services for prosecution of the landlord Mr C for unlawful eviction of his tenant, the solicitor with conduct of the case did not make any attempt to interview the victim and draft statements until July 2003. The victim therefore waited 5 months for 5 hours of time from legal services. Further delays in bringing the case to court combined with the failure to offer the suspect an interview under caution threatened to jeopardise the prosecution in Jan 2004. The details of this case in respect to the failings of legal services in the prosecution of the landlord were summarised for Fair Treatment at Work (FTAW) hearings and in particulars for ET claims. I believe that if this case was properly audited mistakes by both Jo Brown in housing and solicitor Guy Atkins would have been apparent so it wouldn't be enjoyable reading for either department. I could not understand why the landlord was not charged with separate harassment offences for removal of the tenant’s goods worth £4,000 but legal services may have realised that would have highlighted Bexley Council’s failure of duty to protect them for him under the homelessness legislation.

Employment Tribunal hearing - costs

My claims of Sex discrimination (victimisation), Racial Harassment, Public Interest Disclosure detriments and unfair dismissal will all be heard at Ashford Employment Tribunal over a 5 week period from Monday 27th October 2008

All donations towards my costs of fighting the Big Bullies at Bexley will be gratefully received and can be paid to Barclays bank sort code 20-62-69 account 50099562 Thanks