Been suspended :( - Legal advice please

TDA10

Post now deleted due to personal reasons

Anihilator

Your going to be entirely justifiably sacked. Have some respect and resign.

boothebirdy

I'm afraid I have to agree the above poster, you don't really have a leg to stand on. There is no excuse for forging doctors notes

oxenryd

I would leave too, to be honest why would you want to return to that place? I don't mean because of what you ve done - most of us have done very silly things in the past-, it just doesn't seem to be a nice place.

(You may want to edit your signature)

Dizzy_Ditzy

Sorry, I dont have any sympathy with you on this one. You should not have lied and quite frankly deserve to lose your job by forging GP letters.

They are quite within their rights to request your medical records from your GP relating to this illness. You refuse to sign authorisation for that and you prove that you have something to hide.

Zazen999

The only thing you can really do; is to appeal the decision when they dismiss you based on them not following their own procedure. The thing with the colleague is irrelevant; but you can file a grievance against him or them if you want. If you put this in now, before any dismissal; then it may have a bearing on their decision and may have a bearing on any decision made by a tribunal - but it may not.

However, I do suspect that you will be dismissed; it will only be based on the procedure that they did not follow that will determine whether you can take it to a tribunal or not.

dmg24

Agree with the others. You are trying to find a way out of what is clearly a fundamental breach of mutual trust and respect. I can also see how the other 'incident' could be seen as harassment.

I would resign, and in your letter of resignation apologise for your behaviour and the inconvenience caused to your employer (B&Q I assume?).

elsien

Without going into the rights and wrongs of what you did, if you are unclear about the procedures your best bet is to phone ACAS or consult an employment lawyer. Are you in a union or does your household insurance cover legal costs?

In our company, being suspended is where the formal procedure kicks in, so I would say that how they've handled things with regard to the informal chat and suspension is ok as long as they follow the formal procedure from here on in. (although I'm not an HR expert.)
I think saying they don't recognise stress as an illness is out of order - if you're signed off sick by your GP they'd have to go down the second opinion route to challenge that, and if you'd left it at simply saying you'd been in hospital you might have been able to argue it was the pressure of the moment.

However by forging hospital notes you've taken it to a whole new level, and I think you're clutching at straws a bit to be thinking entrapment or whatever. I can't comment on how likely to are to be able to argue constructive dismissal, but I'd strongly advise keeping the other "private" stuff about your colleagues out of it and concentrate on the allegations that have been made about you.

Edit - if you genuinely feel too unwell to attend you may be able to postpone it if you can get a medical note confirming this, however you can expect your company to be a tad sceptical about this given the circumstances up till now. How sympathetic is your GP - would they be prepared to back you up for a delay in these circumstances?

Zazen999

TDA10 - have a look on here - there is a sticky on tribunals. You obviously have to go through the motions and it can take aeons.

TDA10

Thanks Elsien - I have kept that matter out of things, but it's my employers who referred to it in the meeting - which like you say, shouldn't have been as it has nothing to do with the allegations.

I'm not trying to 'get out of it' as others have said - I just want them to understand that I did it whilst under extreme pressure and never intended any malice etc - I just want to get a final warning if poss, get back to work and carry on as before. I'm not a bad person but I am very weak and gullible and just got in a situation.

jazabelle

I'm really sorry to hear about your situation. I don't really have any advice, I just wanted to say I sympathise. I can understand feeling desperate in those circumstances.

On another note, it's also disgusting they don't accept stress/depression as an illness, when it's medically recognised.