THE man investigating whistle-blowing claims about council bosses at the heart of an employment tribunal was adamant there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

Liam Henry, Northumberland County Council’s monitoring officer, carried out an investigation into alleged complaints which implicated the authority’s former and current chief executives, Steve Mason and Daljit Lally respectively.

A two-week tribunal hearing heard the cases of Sarah Kirk and Chris Stephenson, who were in managerial positions in the authority’s HR service, but were selected for redundancy in the autumn of 2016 during a restructuring of the department.

Mrs Kirk was claiming unfair dismissal, whistle blowing, detriment, disability discrimination, harassment and victimisation and Mr Stephenson was claiming unfair dismissal and age discrimination.

The county council refuted and contested all of the allegations which were later investigated by Mr Henry who said he found nothing to support the allegations. However, the tribunal had earlier heard from John Stenhouse who claimed his words were deliberately misstated by Mr Henry during the investigation in order to exonerate Mrs Lally and the county council.

Mr Stenhouse had reported that, in a meeting with Mrs Lally, the PA to director Barry Rowland was told that Mr Rowland would somehow leave the council, or words to that effect, if the PA made a complaint about bullying against him.

Mr Stenhouse claimed, though, that Mr Henry later added in his report that this would only happen ‘if we find him guilty’ or ‘if there are grounds’ to qualify the claim.

All of the evidence has now been heard, but the final submissions on behalf of the two claimants and the county council will take place next month before a decision is issued.