"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.

Whenever I'm out walking the dog early morning or late and night, and a police car drives by, I always start to feel a bit nervous, even though I know I've done nothing wrong!

Thank you! I love it.

How do I order it?

Answering my own q.
TT's substack has a link to a Mail article dated 25 May 2024. This must be the sentence that upset TA: 'But a human resources manager at the hospital trust allegedly said that the female nurses need to 'be more inclusive', 'broaden their mindset' and 'be educated and attend training'.

Assume the recording backs this up.

Well if that's the case it seems to be completely accurate given the extracts we've heard from emails etc. I can't remember the exact wording from yesterday but there was definitely something about the nurses needing to be educated.

It is farcical but there’s a serious point to all of this. A lot of senior people are noted as witnesses giving evidence, and so far we’ve not been able to hear from anyone who has THE job to make decisions in response to concerns/complaints/grievances or whatever the process was supposed to be when the nurses made their feelings known about this man being in the F CR & also his inappropriate behaviour while in there.

That’s a helluva lot of highly paid people batting a problem away from their door. It’s frankly disgusting to see this many highly paid people incapable of doing a job.

I thought the reference TA made to “Forstater”, and then “manifestations” was interesting.

Cleary in the HR circles she would have been knocking about in, there were great efforts to make all manifestations prohibited.

She tried to make herself look clever and ended up looking really stupid.

I watched an interview with an American sports coach who said she raised objections about men in women's sports and was essentially told, by Mr Higher Up, "well the women won't sue us but the TW might." (Wish I'd made a note of who she was.)

That's what's playing out in all these cases - in all the dancing round to appease the men who might make a fuss, it's either not occurred to the Higher Ups that the women might also make a fuss, or that if they make a fuss they might push it as far as legal action. This is the result of being blind to the fact that Women Are People Too isn't it?

"The women said what? Oh, go tell someone else, I can't be bothered with that noise. I can't even be bothered to give it the headspace to consider what the issue might be, let alone if it's valid. Anyway, it's only women's things, it can wait. Yeah, just ignore it, they won't want to make a fuss."

I would like NF or the judge to ask someone "when you realised the policy said Rose in the CR was fine, and that was an obstacle to putting Rose elsewhere, did you at any time think perhaps the solution was to seek to change the policy?"

I am also wondering about TA. I don't get the sense she's a True Believer. But she has said she was worried that Rose might not be out as trans, and that she hasn't met Rose. This makes me wonder what her imagined version of Rose is like, and whether she is in for a shock.

Yesterday TA said she had no idea what this "education talk" the nurses were talking about and suggested that it wasn't a thing.

In later evidence TA said that she considered that because the nurses complaint wasn't a complaint, she set the EDI person on the nurses to, well, educate them.

Difference between NC and NF is that the judge didnt feel the need to ask lots of questions as NC made it obvious for them.

TA obviously didnt realise how her how dare they ask me a personal question was going to look alongside allowing Rose to ask more personal questions.

Also mention of “the Sheffield case” as described upthread, another inappropriate man in the CR case for which the man claimed discrimination and harassment against the Trust, and arguably the wrong comparator was used because they equated him with an actual woman being naked in the female CR rather than a man.

To be fair their assumption was valid pre-2021 thinking: no woman in her right mind would object to a transwoman in a women's single-sex space because the sky would fall in on her head and at the very least she could expect to lose her job.

😂

It's an AI image 😥

Isn't that just typical of all large bureaucracies, though. The bureaucratic roles and processes become and end in themselves and exist just to keep people in employment. Nobody takes responsibility for anything.

Don't forget that the nurses didn't get permission to record this HR meeting, and then went to the Daily Mail shortly after.

I suspect Christian Legal Centre involvement: they are more a campaigning org than a "Legal Centre".

I think the whole point of them recording the meeting secretly was to lay bare the lies and obfuscation that they were facing from management and HR. I don’t think it was intended to form the base of their legal case.

It's a good thing they did record it though, isn't it?

Maybe they wouldn't have had to record it or go to the press if women's concerns about these things were ever taken seriously. We've seen time and time again, people lying about women who raise concerns, so good on them for recording it, I say.

Absolutely, this case and Sandie Peggie's case are both doing this. I think a lot of people, hopefully including Wes Streeting, will be horrified by the utterly inept and multitudinous layers of management in the NHS.

There might be a few vacancies coming up!

Let's hope some of these HR professionals are sacked for incompetence

I don't know what the law is on covert recording to aid your own recollection - as this was originally said to be - but I would have thought that the fact that the report in the papers is accurate makes any offence a technicality.

As far as I know, it's not illegal to record without consent if you are using the recording as a form of personal note-taking, it becomes illegal if you share the recording inappropriately.
I presume the nurses wanted to be certain that their notes were accurate before they went public with their complaints, and recording was the best way to ensure their notes were not just accurate but verbatim.

In respect of TA's puzzle of why complain now when Rose has been changing there for years- didn't one of the nurses say that during Covid and / or when Rose was a student she didn't encounter them? Does that solve it?

Do we know when the Kindness training was, in relation to the complaints? If I were a nurse and HR said I needed to learn how to be kind that might well tip me over the edge.

This is what I don’t understand. The law on SSS must apply equally to every single trust in the country. All the trusts in my county have these transition at work policies and they all say that men can use women’s facilities if they say they are women. Also Annex B is NHSE policy which must also be unlawful. NHSE just need to grow a backbone and create a policy that applies to all trusts. They must have lawyers available that can interpret the law without waiting for EHRC guidance.

Perhaps Tyler did not call himself Rose until he finished his student years?
Or realised he couldn't get away with it at first?

I hope she does!