NHS Fife tries to silence nurse - Sandie Peggie vs NHS Fife Health Board and Dr Beth Upton - thread #53

[nauticant]

Sandie Peggie, a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy (VH), has brought claims in the employment tribunal against her employer; Fife Health Board (the Board) and another employee, Dr B Upton. Ms Peggie’s claims are of sexual harassment, harassment related to a protected belief, indirect discrimination and victimisation. Dr Upton claims to be a transwoman, that is observed as male at birth but asserting a female gender identity.

The Employment Tribunal hearing started on Monday 3 February 2025 and was expected to last 2 weeks. However, after 2 weeks it was not complete and it adjourned part-heard. It resumed on 16 July and the last day of evidence was 29 July 2025. It resumed again over 1 to 2 September for closing submissions.

The hearing commenced with Sandie Peggie giving evidence. Dr Beth Upton gave evidence from Thursday 6 February to Wednesday 12 February 2025. Sandie Peggie returned to give more evidence on 29 July 2025.

Access to view the second part of the hearing remotely was obtainable by sending an email request to [email protected].

The hearing was live tweeted by x.com/tribunaltweets and there's additional information here: tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-005 and tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/peggie-vs-fife-health-board-and-dr-bd6. This also has threadreaderapp archives of live-tweeting of the sessions of the hearing for those who can't follow on Twitter, for example: archive.ph/WSSjg.

An alternative to Twitter is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

Links to previous threads #1 to #50 can be found in this thread: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5379717-sandie-peggie-list-of-threads-covering-employment-tribunal-and-afterwards

Thread 51: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5402652-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-51 1 September 2025 to 2 September 2025
Thread 52: mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5403218-nhs-fife-tries-to-silence-nurse-sandie-peggie-vs-nhs-fife-health-board-and-dr-beth-upton-thread-52 2 September 2025 to 4 September 2025

I've hadna chat with an employment law barrister I know who thinks it's unlikely SP will get salary forever. Everyone needs nurses and she can work. There will be some loss of earnings, e.g. loss of night shift supplement, but she may not get six figures. Additionally the court cannot order an apology.

That does make sense. Clearly an experienced nurse could find work in the care sector, for example.

Beautiful spoiler alert.

I made it to the end of the final submissions and want a t-shirt printed immediately that says:

WHEN A FEMALE NURSE OBJECTED
SHE WAS STONEWALLED

Brava NC and CE. So well played.

That sounds a bit rubbish. I imagine SP would be right pissed off of that was all she was awarded, after what she's gone through.

We get misled by multi-million dollar claims and awards in American tv shows. My guess is £37,912, including interest.

The gerbil is trying her hardest to write the postcard.

I love it and have saved it for posterity - thanks @Boiledbeetle!

Edit: if this prints well onto something postcard sized, it would be a wonderful thing to send to SP via the Vic Hospital!

Well AI says its resized it to fit on a postcard, don't know if it's telling the truth truth or Dr Upton truth though.

"Can you tell me about a time when you had to resolve a work conflict? How did you go about doing this?"

"Had a big old fake cry and got walked to my car by a woman half my size"

Has to be more than that.
Think of the legal fees. I know fees aren't normally awarded but this is no ordinary case.

Fife are reported to have spent nearly a million on it.

Sandies backer must have spent similar if not more. Keeping in mind the have paid for MG, NC, CE and the sonographers.

Then the additional cost because of Fife not disclosing stuff when requested.

We’ll see. That’s my guess for damages, not including any fees award.

Maybe we should not count our chickens

We probably don't want to raise hopes too much. Employment Tribunal awards are usually quite modest.

The 2024 Rachel Meade v Westminster City Council (WCC) and Social Work England (SWE) has some similarities to the NHS Fife case.

The Tribunal's judgement in Rachel Meade's favour was damning with respect to WCC and SWE.

Rachel received £58,344 in compensation. This was considered a large amount compared to the average award in similar cases.

Rachel, a social worker, had been suspended by WCC for a year on allegations of gross misconduct. This followed her sanction from SWE in July 2021 in response to some 'gender critical' posts on her private Facebook page made in 2020. A former colleague and Facebook 'friend', Aedan Wolton, had complained to SWE saying the posts made Rachel unfit to practise.

The Employment Tribunal findings were very critical of both WCC and SWE. Including that both the WCC disciplinary process and SWE's actions had amounted to harassment. And that Rachel's posts did not incite hatred, violence or defamation, but were legitimate expressions of her protected beliefs.

So, to my mind, a little over £58,000 was disappointing relative to the harassment and poor judgement shown by the Respondents.

Time will tell!

All that blood, sweat and tears, for that? Seems very mean. Sounds like the process is the punishment, again.

The tribunal will attempt to establish what your damages were from the discrimination, harassment or victimization that ocurred at work, and make you whole. You're not supposed to come out ahead, and there's nothing purely for the trouble of having to take legal action.

In this case, SP is still employed (and has been throughout), and it isn't a full time role.

There may be extra damages because the other side's misbehaviour in the way they ran their defence, but otherwise the circus accompanying a legal action is just part of life's daily struggle and effort that people are expected to put up with without complaint.

I'm sure you have a better handle on it than I have, @MyAmpleSheep , but it seems a bit bleak to me. Pour encourager les autres, indeed.

Hoping to be pleasantly surprised, and that you can say I was terribly wrong. But not hopeful, if you know what I mean.

Seems grim to me too. Especially considering the cost of the lawyers and legal teams.

No blinking wonder Fife thought they could brush it all under the carpet. Nothing to see here guys.

Once again I cannot thank Sandie enough for her strength and courage to take this forward. And her amazing backer. It makes me feel even more grateful knowing they are unlikely to even get the costs back.
What a fabulous person to do that.

I don’t see how she can go back to work at Fife with some sort of “let’s all be nice to each other now” agreement as suggested up thread. So I would expect her to take further action for constructive dismissal.

Pretty much. So this is where going after people personally as respondents rather than just through the institution might help redress the balance a bit, make people take on some of the risks of their behaviour.

Unfortunately I cant see the award being massive but I imagine Sandy is out of paid sick leave now and has been on half pay for a while. Fife could possibly offer early retirement on medical grounds (PTSD anyone?). It would be sensible to do so and avoid a constructive dismissal case.

The tribunal cant order an apology but they can remind Fife of the instruction by the Equality Regulator.

NHSF don’t appear to like sensible very much.

The expense of doing this is a real impediment to people whose employers treat them badly and it’s a system failure.

It seems to me that NHSF are at fault and should be investigated for said system failure - for example, KS knows she has acted unprofessionally, damaging her reputation and endangering her own career - evident from her response to being asked what business she had contacting a witness. She interfered with an investigation, broke its confidentiality and recruited cheerleaders for one side when only one side had been heard.

But you have to wonder why none of this behaviour triggered a system response. Why did nobody who got that email respond by reporting it to HR or somebody else and saying ‘this is in breach of SP’s employment rights’? And there could be several reasons, including not wanting to get involved, being too busy to pay attention to every one of KS’s hobby horses (we don’t know if she does round robin emails regularly, if this is characteristic), not recognising any of the names and thinking ‘that’s a no response required email’, being afraid that forwarding it will identify you as a trouble maker, or not knowing what can be done / who you can report to.

Although after the tribunal the answer is clearly Lottie Myles - bad systems beat good people, and LM is sadly not running the show.

Wasn't the evidence presented by Fife that no one at all responded to the e-mail sent by KS?