"Darlington Nurses" vs County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust Tribunal Thread 8

[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&7)
Thread 4, 29-Oct to 31-Oct; TA, AM (day 7) JB (day 8)
Thread 5, 31-Oct to 04-Nov; JB (day 8), SW, CG, JR (day 9)
Thread 6, 04-Nov to 05-Nov; RH (day 10), SW (day 11)
Thread 7, 05-Nov to 11-Nov; SW (day 11), closing submissions

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 now complete. Submissions are being made on November 11th. 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, NHS 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, NHS trust Head of HR
TA – Tracy Atkinson, NHS trust HR.
AM – Andrew Moore, NHS Head of Workforce Experience
JB – Jillian Bailey, NHS Workforce Experience Manager
AT – Anna Telfer, NHS Deputy Director of Nursing
SW – Sandra Watson, Matron for General and Elective Surgery
JR – Jodie Robinson, manager of Rose

For all her faults, you can't hold the Fife chief executive responsible for failings in Darlington - not just a different trust but a different country.

CEO, Sue Jacques, has already legged it with a new CEO, Steve Russell, in place since Sept 2025.

There is as been an "Interim Chair", Alison Marshall, since Oct 2025 - when Professor Richard Scothon "stepped down".

I wonder how many more are going to leg it?

https://www.cddft.nhs.uk/about-us/corporate-information/trust-board/executive-non-executive-directors

No but you can hold the Fife CEO responsible for failings that arose from Fife deciding to copy County Durham & Darlington's "Transitioning in the Workplace Policy".

That has nothing to do with the Darlington surgery horrors.

You don't think that there has been a pattern of mismanagement?

There have been multiple instances of mismanagement. Conflating issues doesn't help to solve them.

This thread is about CDDFT mismanagement wrt the Darlington Nurses.

What was brought up was whether there would be resignations of top management at Darlington, where there have been "multiple instances of mismanagement", as there have been at Fife, with the Fife CEO going after "multiple instances of mismanagement".

That is a comparison.

The connection is Fife copying Darlington's "Transitioning in the Workplace Policy".

There is no "conflation".

What was brought up was blaming Carol Potter for the Darlington breast surgery. You might want to read the post I originally replied to rather than attempting to patronise me.

I think the Carol Potter reference might have been thread confusion rather than any sort of conflation...

That's what I thought - easy to do.

@NoBinturongsHereMate Sorry - health scare recently, I'm not exactly firing on all cylinders.

Apologies if that sounded patronising, it was not my intention.

I did read the post you were originally replying to.

My misunderstanding is that I thought that you were accusing me of "conflating issues" because you replied directly to me and to what I had said.

The way it is going there are going to be plenty of managerial roles for NHS England staff to go for after they have taken voluntary redundancy, gone on holiday for 6 months (to keep the cash) and then look for what’s available.

I love it when wims make up

Earlier today I was chatting to a colorectal surgeon who works in one of the East Anglian trusts (we were singing together in an Advent service). Unprompted, he said, "I have a list on my desk, and every time we get some rubbish round from Internal Comms, there's always a photo of the CEO standing next to someone with a stupid job title, and I add it to the list. Head of Transformation, Director of Performance Management, Inclusion Officer... I mean, what do these people DO? I can tell you what I do, which includes removing things that men have shoved up their arses. I can tell you what the theatre nurses do. I can tell you what the receptionists and the physios do. But what the fuck do these people DO all bloody day?"

Conversation moved on before I could bore him with Tribunals I Have Followed, luckily for him, but I thought it was interesting. I asked him if he'd read the article "Bullshit Jobs" and he said he read it and liked it so much he bought the book (and keeps it prominently displayed).

Thank you for that, Hedgehog, I love it too when a poster says sorry, and the reply is sorry back - being reasonable, polite and understanding isn't the exactly norm in online discussions is it? So I appreciate it when it happens here.
Nice one, POWNewcastleEastWallsend, NoBinturongsHereMate, and anyolddinosaur

Head of Transformation, Director of Performance Management, Inclusion Officer... I mean, what do these people DO?

Attend meetings. Write policies. Develop processes. Undergo training. Meetings about policies, processes about training, policies about processes, training about meetings...round and round they go with a lovely big payslip at the end of every month.

The question has to be WHY? What do they actually - REALLY - achieve?

And how many of the frontline, patient-meeting staff do they actually affect with what they do, as opposed to more of the lanyard classes behind the scenes?

Reasonableness on the Internet - whatever next? Perhaps tribunals will slow down a bit so there's less chance of us all getting them mixed up.

Some of the back office jobs are very much needed - paying staff, ordering supplies, filing records, fixing tech are much better done by dedicated teams rather than frontline staff taking time out from clinical duties to do them (badly). But very definitely not all of them - and probably none of the ones that didn't exist 20 years ago.

At my last place we had an HR department, which was fair enough - they placed job adverts sorted contracts, resolved staff disputes¹ etc. But then they brought in increasing numbers of 'head of people' type positions that all had similar titles and sounded as if they were HR-type jobs but actually weren't. And when you tried to dig down into the job description to work out what they actually did, it was waffle all the way down.

¹ At least in theory. In practice they seemed to cause as many as they solved.

Some of the back office jobs are very much needed - paying staff, ordering supplies, filing records, fixing tech are much better done by dedicated teams rather than frontline staff taking time out from clinical duties to do them (badly).

Absolutely agree. I'm referring to the EDI-type roles that don't seem to have any defined function or use. The question should really be "What would happen if we got rid of this role?" If we get rid of IT support, or the legal department, or payroll, things go to shit really quickly. But if we got rid of "Head of Transformation" or "Director of Workforce Experience" would anyone actually notice?

Also, transformation should be a process, not a fucking department. You start at A, you apply project management stuff to plan and navigate to B, you put monitoring in place, you fuck off. Yes, I used to work in change management.

If you have a department of transformation they have to keep changing things to keep themselves in a job, rather than because a change is actually needed. Resulting in a constant state of flux and uncertainty

The latest episode of This Isn't Working has an interesting section talking about how it's mad that risk management departments don't have any oversight of, or interest in, EDI stuff.

I can understand why risk management wouldn't be interested in that stuff. They have to be focused primarily on operational issues. I find it much harder to understand why boards cannot apparently do the smallest amount of critical thinking to understand that EDI CAN be a risk and you need to think it through.

Thank you. I am a risk manager looking to pivot careers. I would be ideal to challenge on EDI. Also used to be a trustee for a charity and have seen how badly wrong it can go if an EDI lead only focusses on 1 prot characteristic. (Not gender in my case, ethnicity, but the key prot characteristic for this charity always was disability).