A v Nottinghamshire County Council Record of an Attended Hearing at the Employment Tribunal — 2021

The claimant was a teacher employed from 4 January 2017 until her dismissal on 21 September 2022. The case arose from her concerns about Child X, a pupil who was socially transitioning, and from the school's response to those concerns. The tribunal found that the school tried to manage the situation through meetings, letters and a return-to-work plan, and that the claimant agreed in October 2021 to keep the child's information confidential and to avoid unnecessary contact and use of names or pronouns that would disclose the child's identity.

On whistleblowing, the tribunal accepted that the 5 October 2021 grievance to governors was a protected disclosure by agreement. It found that the claimant's later 14 January 2022 letter and 11 February 2022 letter to the LADO contained disclosures of information and were subjectively believed by her to be in the public interest, but that those beliefs were not objectively reasonable. The tribunal also held that the alleged disclosure to solicitors and the High Court was not sufficiently identified, and that accessing CPOMS was not itself a disclosure but a separate, unauthorised act. It rejected the argument that the claimant's access to CPOMS and related conduct formed part of a protected disclosure, and it found that the alleged September 2021 detriments were out of time and did not form a continuing course of conduct, with no just and equitable extension.

The tribunal found that the claimant repeatedly accessed CPOMS between November 2021 and April 2022, copied Child X's information to her personal computer and memory stick, and then used that information in her judicial review material. It held that the reason for the 9 May 2022 suspension, the investigation, the ICO report, the TRA and DBS referrals, the dismissal, and the appeal outcome was the claimant's misconduct in misusing CPOMS and sharing confidential child data, not whistleblowing or religious belief. The dismissal was upheld after a full rehearing on appeal, and the tribunal held that the respondent had an honest belief in misconduct on reasonable grounds after a reasonable investigation.

The discrimination and harassment claims failed. Applying the Eweida, Page and Higgs line of authority, the tribunal accepted that the claimant honestly held the stated Christian beliefs, but held that the respondent's actions were taken because of the separate, objectionable conduct of unauthorised access to confidential records, not because of the beliefs themselves. The tribunal also held that the conduct relied on was not sufficiently related to the claimant's beliefs for harassment purposes, and in any event did not meet the harassment threshold. No remedy, declaration, reinstatement or recommendation was made.