Jack Feeny, of No5 Barristers’ Chambers, has successfully represented the Ministry of Justice against an unfair dismissal claim brought by a former prison officer.
Diane Ward, 55, claimed she had been unfairly dismissed from HMP Nottingham because she had made 100 security information reports relating to large quantities of drugs being smuggled into the prison and breakdowns in discipline.
Ward was a prison officer from 1983 until 2015. She began to raise concerns about conditions inside HMP Nottingham in 2013, where she had worked since 1997. She told the employment tribunal that the 100 security information reports she submitted over a three-year period were raising concerns “in the public interest”.
But the London Central employment tribunal dismissed her unfair dismissal claim and found that she had been diagnosed with work-related stress, which made it difficult to do her job, and that her disclosures had no effect on the decision to dismiss her.
