34 - Double Standards in Policy: Why Bury College’s Defence Doesn’t Add Up

After losing at tribunal for procedural unfairness, Bury College has attempted to defend its decision to dismiss a long-serving maths lecturer. A spokesperson told the press:

“Bury College is an inclusive College and has no room for discrimination of any kind. Whilst we are disappointed that process errors deemed the dismissal unfair, the College is confident the decision to dismiss was correct.”

 

But this selective framing leaves out a crucial element of the judgment: the College itself broke multiple policies and procedures throughout the process.

 

A Double Standard

The College treated the lecturer’s single use of the word, repeated back to a student who had used it first, as so severe that dismissal was the only option. Yet the tribunal record shows that the College itself:

* Ignored its own Complaints Policy, fast-tracking a mother’s complaint to Stage 2 when it should have started at Stage 1.

* Ignored the Low Level Concerns Policy, even after the LADO (Local Authority Designated Officer) ruled that the harm threshold was not met.

* Breached its own Suspension Policy, keeping the lecturer out of work without the mandatory reviews or consideration of alternatives.

* Relied on an unreasonable investigation, which included an unsupervised phone call with a vulnerable student by the Designated Safeguarding Lead.

If breaches of policy are sufficient to destroy trust and confidence in an employee, as the College argued, then why do the College’s own breaches of policy not carry the same weight?

 

The Role of the DSL

This inconsistency is especially troubling when it comes to Sarah Walton, the College’s Designated Safeguarding Lead. Walton admitted at tribunal that during her investigation she repeated the very same word, “retard,” to the very same student, and did so despite acknowledging she knew it could cause harm.

Unlike the lecturer, who repeated the word in the moment without forethought, Walton had time to consider her role, her words, and her safeguarding duty. Her duty was to protect students all the time, not just when it suited the College’s case. Yet she was never investigated, never disciplined, and never held accountable for conduct that mirrored, and arguably exceeded the lecturer’s.

 

Ignoring the LADO

Even more concerning, Walton disregarded the findings of the Local Authority Designated Officer. The LADO concluded the harm threshold was not met, which should have triggered the College’s low-level concerns procedure. Instead, Walton claimed it was the College, not the LADO, who decided whether the threshold was met, effectively overriding the statutory safeguard designed to ensure fairness and proportionality.

 

Conclusion

Bury College insists it has “no room for discrimination of any kind.” Yet it appears to have ample room for double standards: one rule for the lecturer, another for itself.

If policies matter, they must apply equally. If safeguarding matters, it must be consistent. If trust and confidence can be lost through a single breach, then the same principle must apply to those at the top. Anything less undermines both fairness and the credibility of the institution itself.

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