Status whilst suspended pending a disciplinary hearing

HONEYMONSTER

In November last year, my Dad was suspended from work for a disciplinary issue and an inital investigation was set for early December, with a disciplinary meeting for mid December.

In the 3rd week in November they wrote to several clients and suppliers saying that he was being investigated by the police for financial irregularities, in the supplier letters they said the police had frozen the bank account due to this and as such they coud not pay their bill until the account was released by the Police. They also said that this shouldn't concern them as they were now under new Management.

At ths stage the bank account had actually been frozen by a Director due to a dispute amongst the Directors and Dad had not been reported to the police, although he was sometime later and was subsequently released by the police with no further action due to lack of evidence.

My question is, given the fact that he was yet to be questioned by his employers for the investigatory meeting, surely by writing out to supplier/clients in this manner it implies they have already made their mind up, because there was no way he could walk back into his job after that, if found innocent as he was?

A pension advisor rang to speak to him a couple of days after he was suspened (last week in Nov) and they told him Dad was suspended and was being investigated by the police but they didn't even complain to the police until 7th December.

I know this makes my Dad sound bad but he was proven by the Police not to be doing anything untowards.

Dad also took a tape recorder in for the initial investigatory meeting and naively agreed to leave it to let them do a transcript for both sides. When he got the tape back but no transcript, they had deleted 50% of everything he had said, leaving parts to be taken totally out of context - however having just got some documentation from them, it appears they got the full transcript so obviously it was OK when they listened to it! My Dad disputes some of their transcript but can't prove it.

Finally his ex employers have gone into his private email account after his departure, without his permission or knowledge and have downloaded some of his emails dated 3 months after he was dismissed. The bright spark uses the same password on all his accounts and once they saw his new email account, they obviously decided to take advantage. Can I get the tribunal to discount this?

We are going to an employment Tribunal but can 't afford a solicitor. Any words of wisdom?

maninthestreet

Your Dad's empoyer has broken the law by accessing his private email account. This may be a criminal act, but others on here may know about this.

HONEYMONSTER

Yes thank you, I had sort of tracked down that under the above act it was illegal but how do we prove it wasn't with his permission! I'm wondering if we can apply to the tribunal to have them excluded. It just seems very underhand and unfair.

SarEl

Tribunals have different rules of evidence, and it is very likely that if the e-mails are relevant, then the tribunbal would accept them into evidence however they may have been obtained, especiually since your father cannot prove that there was anything untoward about this.

I am sorry to be blunt, but fancy footwork does not win tribunals - saying that your father was suspended to people, or that there was police involvement (whether they had yet become involved or not) is not a pre-judgement. Nor is "finding no evidence" the same thing as "innocent". And an employer also does not have to have evidence that an employee has done wrong - they only have to demonstrate reasonable belief, which is an entirely different matter. And it sounds from your own account here that your father was involved in something, whether knowingly or not. I may be wrong about that - it is just how it sounds from your post.

So that is the starting point. In any shape or form - did he "do it"? Because if he did, then you aren't really in a strong position. But in terms of process and procedure, nothing that you have said would be sufficient to substantiate a tribunal claim. Sorry - you need more than this

Uncertain

There are two threads running on this at the moment.

My post (in the other thread!) simply suggested trying to use the firm's wrongdoing as a lever to try and broker a settlement.