Town hall ‘femme fatale’ was unfairly sacked by council
A COUNCIL clerk branded a gold digger and femme fatale by colleagues over her close relationship with a married councillor has won a claim for unfair dismissal.
Jane Woodward became close to councillor Roger Peat, whose wife was in a care home with Alzheimer’s, an employment tribunal heard.
Mr Peat, 64, bought Mrs Woodward – who is in her early 40s – gifts and took her on holiday as his wife Rosemary’s condition deteriorated. Mrs Peat died last October, aged 66, before the tribunal began.
Mrs Woodward was dismissed from Barnard Castle town council in County Durham but took the case to a tribunal which this week ruled in her favour. She stands to win significant damages. The tribunal found council members were prejudiced against Mrs Woodward due to ‘moral disapproval’ of her relationship with Mr Peat, who quit as a councillor during the dispute.
The six-day hearing was told that in 2017 Mrs Woodward, a deputy town clerk, formed a friendship with Mr Peat, a long-serving councillor. This was ‘perceived by others’ to become ‘an intimate relationship’.
The atmosphere in the office changed after Mrs Woodward’s return from holiday with Mr Peat in April 2018 and from then on ‘remained frosty’. Mrs Woodward was the target of anonymous letters, which were reported to police, and colleagues made comments such as ‘ oh I see the gold digger’s got a sugar daddy’, the tribunal heard. The tribunal judgment stated fellow councillor and Mayor Sandra Moorhouse regarded Mrs Woodward as a femme fatale and she influenced colleagues at the town council to hold the same view.
It culminated in Mrs Woodward’s suspension in February 2019 for ‘gross insubordination and a breach of confidences in terms of information passing between her and a councillor’.
Mr Peat, speaking from his home in Barnard Castle, was
‘Moral disapproval’
asked whether he and Mrs Woodward were in a relationship. He replied: ‘We’re friends’, and declined to go into further detail. In a finding of unfair dismissal, Judge Seamus Sweeney said: ‘We have found that at the heart of this whole story lay a moral disapproval of the claimant’s relationship with Councillor Peat.’ He also upheld Mrs Woodward’s complaint of disability discrimination, on the grounds the council failed to make ‘reasonable adjustment’ for the depression and anxiety she suffered from.
Mrs Woodward told Barnard Castle’s The Teesdale Mercury newspaper after the verdict: ‘The longer the suspension went on the worse my anxiety became. The unfair dismissal affected my career, my mental health and my whole life.’