Council worker says she caught colleagues ‘spying on her’ while she was signed off sick

A council worker accused her colleagues of ‘spying’ on her while ‘walking continuously’ past her home while she was on sick leave.

Debra Dugmore took leave from working at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council between February 2021 and January 2022 after suffering an adverse reaction from a Covid vaccine.

Mrs Dugmore, who had joined the local authority in 2016 and served as team leader in the council’s homelessness

She had underlying conditions including duplex kidneys and a duplex ureter, some of which she had withheld from her employer.

A tribunal heard from Mrs Dugmore that her line manager, Hayley Rowley, became ‘rogue’ after she took her leave of absence.

Submissions from both sides showed the pair had a close and casual relationship, with Mrs Dugmore regularly discussing her medical conditions and quipping that she had a ‘third kidney’.

The hearing was showed a 15-second clip, featuring two people talking loudly on the street outside claimant’s home, Daily Mail reported.

While the two people in the video could not be identified by the tribunal, Mrs Dugmore argued that her co-workers had ‘spied’ on her because they refused to believe she was unfit to work.

The council responded that the two colleagues were walking in the area following reports of travellers, however the hearing found that they did not walk directly to the place they were last sighted.

The pair said they spotted Mrs Dugmore unloading shopping from her car, but insisted it was only then that they knew where she lived.

One of the co-workers said she regularly went walking and told the employment tribunal that, on that occasion, she was attending a family meal.

Mrs Dugmore insisted the incident was not ‘innocuous’, as the two individuals had ‘continuously’ walked past her house, which is located on a quiet street near to green space more apt for walking.

She said the circumstances would have been different had her colleagues contacted her earlier and asked to drop by.

‘Her case was that their walking past was related to her sickness absence and had both statutory purposes, contributing to her increasingly withdrawing from activities outside the home’, the tribunal’s decision letter detailed.

Despite returning to work at the council in January 2022, Mrs Dugmore resigned from her role in April of the same year.

However all her claims of harassment were dismissed by the tribunal.

Judge David Faulkner concluded that Mrs Dugmore’s line manager had not breached her obligations, while suggesting that an informal approach to dealing with employment matters may not be appropriate with some members of staff.

He concluded that while Mrs Dugmore may have felt she had been harassed, her claim failed on the facts because the doorbell footage didn’t prove the council workers had walked past her home.

The judge further added that the council had no reason to send colleagues to spy on Mrs Dugmore as she was in constant contact with her line manager, who thought her case was genuine.

‘In fact, there were several occasions when [Mrs Dugmore] told Ms Rowley she was doing things other than simply sitting at home, for example, being at a relative’s house, and none of that led Ms Rowley to suggest that the absence was in some way improper’, he added.

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