{"id":2878,"date":"2025-07-12T00:25:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T00:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/2878\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T00:25:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T00:25:04","slug":"sacked-bath-hospital-surgeon-loses-unfair-dismissal-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/2878\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacked Bath hospital surgeon loses unfair dismissal claim"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carys Nally<\/p>\n

BBC News, West of England<\/p>\n

\"BBCBBC<\/p>\n

Seryth Colbert has lost an employment tribunal after claiming he was unfairly dismissed <\/p>\n

A surgeon from Bath has lost an employment tribunal after claiming he was unfairly dismissed for whistleblowing about patient safety concerns. <\/p>\n

The tribunal panel found Seryth Colbert, a consultant in oral and maxillofacial surgery, was sacked from the Royal United Hospital<\/a> in Bath due to his behaviour, not the content of his concerns.<\/p>\n

The surgeon argued he had been subjected to detriment for exercising his rights under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA).<\/p>\n

The Bristol Employment Tribunal panel dismissed his claim and concluded his behaviour with some colleagues was unacceptable, with judgement issued <\/a>on 30 May. Mr Colbert is planning to appeal against the decision. <\/p>\n

The surgeon claimed his dismissal in October 2023 was due to retaliatory victimisation, leading to the tribunal. <\/p>\n

This came after he raised concerns, which included allegations that cancer patients were not being treated and that a patient had been blinded during surgery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In October 2023, a disciplinary panel upheld 11 out of 14 allegations against Mr Colbert, leading to his dismissal.<\/p>\n

These included: bullying and aggressive behaviour, unwanted physical contact, undermining management, inappropriate use of trust processes and rude and dismissive communication.<\/p>\n

The employment tribunal panel found: “Some of this conduct is more serious than others. An isolated rude email is clearly insufficient to warrant summary dismissal. <\/p>\n

“Low level unwanted physical contact might also be regarded as somewhat innocuous.”<\/p>\n

Plans for appeal<\/p>\n

The panel added: “Similarly, the fact that the claimant raised issues brought to him by junior doctors with someone other than the clinical lead in the department, may seem a long way from repudiatory conduct.<\/p>\n

“However, once the context, intention and impact are considered, the conduct, taken collectively, does, we conclude, amount to repudiatory breach. <\/p>\n

“The claimant acted in a way which was coercive to junior colleagues, undermined a senior colleague and was intimidating.<\/p>\n

“Although, there is no doubt at all, that his treatment of other colleagues was exemplary, beneficial and inspiring, that does not detract from our findings.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carys Nally BBC News, West of England BBC Seryth Colbert has lost an employment tribunal after claiming he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[28,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-2878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}