"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 4

[ThreeWordHarpy]

Thread 1, 7-Oct to 23-Oct; pre-hearing discussion, KD (day 1 of evidence) and BH (day 2).
Thread 2, 23-Oct to 28-Oct; BH (day 2), CH, JP, MG (day 3&4), TH, SS, ST, LL (day 4), JS, AT (day 5)
Thread 3, 28-Oct to 29-Oct, AT (day 5&6), TA (day 6)

Five nurses working at Darlington Memorial Hospital have filed a legal case suing their employer, an NHS trust, for sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The nurses object to sharing the women’s changing facilities with a male colleague, Rose, who identifies as female. The hearing started on October 20th, with evidence starting on October 22nd and is scheduled to last 3 weeks. To view the hearing online requests for access had to be made by October 17th. The hearing is being live tweeted by Tribunal Tweets who have background to this case on their substack. An alternative to X is to use Nitter: nitter.net/tribunaltweets or nitter.poast.org/tribunaltweets

The Judge made clear at the start of the public hearing on Day 1 that only TT or press have permission to tweet. If online observers see/hear something in the court that isn’t reported by TT, we don’t mention it until the next time there’s a break. This is a very cautious approach to avoid any accusations of “live reporting” on MN. Commentary on the content of TT tweets is fine as soon as they’re posted on X.

Key people:
C/Ns - Claimants, the Darlington nurses
R/T/Trust - Respondent, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
J/EJ – Judge/Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney
NF - Niazi Fetto KC, barrister for claimants
SC - Simon Cheetham, KC, barrister for respondents
RH - Rose Henderson, trans identifying nurse
CG – Clare Gregory, ward manager
SW - Sue Williams, NHS Trust HR
KD – Karen Danson, first claimant to give evidence.
BH – Bethany Hutchison, claimant
AH – Alistair Hutchison, husband of Bethany
CH – Carly Hoy, claimant
JP – Jane Peveller, claimant
MG – Mary Anne (aka Annice) Grundy, claimant
TH – Tracy Hooper, claimant
SS – Siobhan Sinclair, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust
ST – Sharron Trevarrow, witness for the claimants, retired from Trust, former housekeeper and wellbeing officer
LL – Lisa Lockey, claimant
JP – Professor Jo Phoenix, expert witness
JS – Jane Shields, witness for the claimants
AT - Andrew Thacker, witness for the respondents, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, witness for the respondents, NHS trust HR.

Please fill up Thread 3 first!

At the end of the last thread I posted that HR teams need to be up to date with much more than the law.
They need to watch EVERY ET and EAT case to see whether precent has been set that will impact their work practices.

The CIPD have been spectaularly bad at reminding members of this

Karen Danson, claimant, gave evidence on Wednesday 22 October 2025.
Bethany Hutchison, claimant, gave evidence on Thursday 23 October 2025.
Mr Hutchinson, gave evidence on Thursday 23 October 2025. But only to confirm his witness statement.
Carly Hoy, claimant, gave evidence on Friday 24 October 2025, morning session.
Jane Peveller, claimant, gave evidence on Friday 24 October 2025, morning session.
Mary Annice Grundy, claimant, gave evidence on Friday 24 October 2025, afternoon session and then gave very brief evidence to include a correction on Monday 27 October 2025, morning session.
Tracy Hooper, claimant, gave evidence on Monday 27 October 2025, morning session.
Siobhan Sinclair gave evidence remotely on Monday 27 October 2025, morning session.
Sharron Trevarrow gave evidence remotely on Monday 27 October 2025, morning session.
Lisa Lockey, claimant, gave evidence on Monday 27 October 2025, morning session.
Jane Shields gave evidence on Tuesday 28 October 2025, morning session.
Kirsten Coutts gave evidence on Tuesday 28 October 2025, morning session.
Andrew Thacker gave evidence from Tuesday 28 October 2025, morning session, to Wednesday 29 October 2025, morning session.
Tracy Atkinson gave evidence on Wednesday 29 October 2025, afternoon session and is expected to continue on Thursday 30 October 2025.

I'm pondering...

For one, I wonder if NF is getting the same sort of hate mail and death threats as NC did in Sandie's ET? Or is he not because there's not much misogyny in threatening a man?

For two, I'd love to see a week's time and motion sheets for AT and TA. Maybe that way I'd find out what they actually DO. Because all we've heard so far is what they don't do. Like think. Or take responsibility. Or read emails. Or anything at all really. (Apart from their collective PhDs in saying Nah, not me guv.)

To me a fundamental question comes down to this:

Having seen the top HR people involved, and how they ran things, what could the nurses have reasonably expected the outcome to be had they engaged with the complaints process to the degree that would have satisfied the Trust?

I know there were concerns before the tribunal started about the claimants' counsel, but NF seems very competent.

You can avoid an awful lot of employment tribunals if you have a little empathy and ask yourself is this how I would like to be treated.

Ive lost an hour going down a rabbit hole trying to find out if the NHS uses something like ISO9001 - does anyone know?

This is my Mastermind topic so read on if I am too boring.
A QMS has a requirement to identify and assess regularly legislation and regulations. To identify changes that the organisation had to address. Esp obligations that are a few years down the road but would require lots of resources and time to become compliant. This was my job. To spot potential changes, pass onto the right dept and specialists to check if it applied and if so, manage a plan. We kept a register of current legislation and a direct link to evidence or policies to explain how these regulatory requirements were delivered. And who was responsible.

The regulator inspected our register and wanted evidence that a plan was in hand for any changes and internal actions were tracked.
There was plenty support from our legal folk, who asked their contacts IF they did not know. In addition there were HSE and HR conferences to share best practice etc. We did not wait for regulatory guidance which was always delayed beyond compliance deadlines.

Im not a legal specialist just someone who understood my industry. The HR and Finance Teams had the same approach as we were all part of the ISO9001 or QMS system.

It was accepted that our organisation would operate “in compliance with the law” and the QMS is part of managing that. It seems as if this NHS Trust does not have this as a goal. I do wonder what other laws and regulations are ignored or they are ignorant off?

Rant over.

@NotInMyyName
your thought process accords with mine
and many ex CIPD members on Linkedin.

Not staying up to date with Forstater etc is professional negligence

And not just empathy for one party to the exclusion of others if there’s a conflict.

IANAHRP (I am not a HR professional) but even I've read articles in Personnel Today (or whatever it was called) about Forstater and its effects.

.

Everyone is missing the point - anyone could literally google anything to do with this.

They are literally stupid. They are incompetent yes, avoidant yes, lazy yes. But just stupid. A new HR bod in our org could google for a suggested resolution and get close to a decent response.

The Nurses have been so strong, relentless, held their nerve in face of skepticism. They had each other and for that I’m so grateful.

Fair play to the Christian Legal Centre funding & getting a great barrister.

@ErrolTheDragon Yes - in any dispute you need to ask the question for both parties to the dispute. Hence the nurses do have questions to answer about whether they released Rose's name to the press. It was said today in court that the original press article didnt name Rose.

I haven’t been able to follow, just dipped in occasionally.

How’s it looking? It sounds as though it’s the usual- totally reasonable women with a totally unreasonable structure resisting listening to their concerns because <reasons>.

Does that sound right? Is this interloper similar to Upton, or a different kind of personality?

Just watching C4 news covering another NHS negligence story, and DH grumbled about the lack of accountability and we agreed that "nothing to do with me guv" is a society issue, not just NHS.

A recent issue local to me was the Ouse Bridge on the M62. An inspection revealed the joints in the bridge were failing so for about three years we had lane closures and a 30mph speed limit - not just on the bridge itself but for several miles beforehand to manage traffic. The bridge re-opened to much local fanfare and within six months some of the new joints in the bridge were failing and lorries suffered from shredded tyres. Apparently the wrong specification of bolt was used during the work, and we were back to lane closures and speed limits again to replace the replacement bolts. As far as I know, no-one has identified why the wrong bolts were specified/ordered/used.

We used to be good at this kind of stuff in the UK, but it's all sliding into what I can only describe as a form of complacent corruption.

Heh, talk of ISO 9001 takes me back! Years back, I used to do some design work on North Sea oil and gas rigs. Both highly dangerous environments, obviously, Fire, explosions etc. Everything, but everything, was nailed down to the nth degree. "Safety is everyone's responsibilty", from the most junior to the most senior. A million miles away from attitudes in the NHS.

Every day makes the nurses win a more likely slam dunk. 95% in the clear

we are two witnesses in to the defence and it is abundantly clear that the nurses have nothing, zippo, nada, fuck all to reproach themselves about.

they would have been better served talking to a brick wall

We’re awful.

china can out in 100,000 miles of super high speed train line in the time it takes us to fail to put in 500. The country’s sunk.

its middle management and bureaucracy gone insane. The country will never get far beyond the standards we are at now.

Clearly the trust is even more fucked than Sandie Peggie:

• Thacker: “It hadn’t occurred to me” to do risk assessment on male in female changing room.
• Atkinson: Called nurses’ complaints “noise in the system” in July 2023 emails.
• No prior investigation into earlier concerns despite safeguarding role.
• Safety failures: Alternative changing room for nurses had no fire safety upgrades for months despite known risks.
• Policy chaos: Trust still using outdated trans policy; no equality impact assessment done.
• Nurses’ conduct: Zero evidence of wrongdoing — all complaints justified and professional.
• Public reaction: Viral thread (491 likes) calls it “policy collapse”; Christian Concern highlights fire safety breach.
• Union angle: UNISON criticised for failing women in both Darlington and Peggie cases.
• Outcome momentum: Defence testimony strengthening nurses’ case — HR seen as dismissive and negligent.

the summary so far I’ve got.

I heard an excellent programme a while back about how to get big infrastructure right. Among the essentials are these two things:

1. Get all of the planning permissions agreed before you start the work.
2. Don't change the plan.

These two things are where many of the big projects in the UK go wrong.

nauticant · Today 15:58

I think that TA is using "complaint" to mean, specifically, "formal complaint". That's why she downplays anything up to, from her point of view, the formal complaint process kicked in. (From previous thread)

It seems from today that HR decided that any rumblings of discontent could be ignored until the official complaint process had started. It also seems that the nurses were not advised of this by HR i.e. HR were not helpful in advising that a official complaint was required or how to submit one.

TA seems insistent on calling the Nurses' complaint a 'situation' prior to the start of the official complaint process to minimize the perceived amount of time that HR wasted

How quickly did Rose submit his counter-complaint?
Was Rose quickly advised by HR that an official complaint process had to be followed?
How much help did HR provide him with submitting the counter-complaint?

I really do wonder if the trust witnesses genuinely believe that the nurses jumped the gun? Or if they can at least admit to themselves, if not anyone else, that months and months was far too long to expect people to wait?

There is all manner of narratives in law and places such as the local ombudsman, about when is a complaint an official complaint.

Put simply a person who objects to something, is by virtue a complainant making a complaint (LOL)

they do not have to write it down, or if they do, they do not have to write in bigly that they are making a complaint.

It is for the recipient of said, concern, gripe or expression of objection, to engage the complainant in whatever process that exists, commonly known as the complaints or grievance procedure.

it is also the responsibility of the recipient to assist said complainant in framing the complaint they wish to make in a coherent fashion (which really was not required in this case)

This line of defence is just not going to wash with the tribunal.