Former BBC CTO Wins Claim For Unfair Dismissal

Former BBC CTO John Linwood has won his claim for unfair dismissal after being sacked last year over the failure of the corporation’s £100 million Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which was intended to create a centralised digital production process, removing the need to use video tape.

The project was scrapped in May 2013 and Linwood was suspended in the same month before being sacked in July 2013. His dismissal was not revealed until January for unspecified legal reasons.

Linwood successfully argued he had been a “scapegoat” for the failed DMI, while the tribunal said it was “astonished” at the BBC’s lack of regard for its own disciplinary process, even though it admitted that the former BBC CTO had been partially responsible for his own departure.

BBC disciplinary process

The tribunal reviewed emails exchanged between three director generals, several BBC executives and former HR director Lucy Adams and detrmined the decision to dismiss Linwood had been made on 13 May last year. It also discovered that the BBC had been interviewing potential replacements before it had initiated disciplinary proceedings and failed to conduct an investigation before the hearings began.

Linwood was given just a few days to review thousands of emails before his hearing and when he requested that it be postponed so he could read them and to take a family holiday, the hearing was brought forward.

Compensation will be determined at a later date, but Linwood said he was “profoundly grateful” for the tribunal’s decision.

“Serious allegations of misconduct were made against me out of the blue and without any foundation or prior investigation,” he said in a statement to BBC News, “I was told to resign or be put through a disciplinary process and face dismissal. I refused to resign because I had not committed any act of misconduct.”

DMI failure

“The employment tribunal has now found that the allegations made against me were ‘general, vague, broad in nature and non-specific’ and ‘virtually impossible to address in any practical way’ and that my summary dismissal was profoundly procedurally and substantively unfair. I believe I was made a scapegoat by the BBC.”

The National Audit Office (NAO) claimed the BBC was too optimistic in its ability to implement the DMI programme and that the broadcaster’s arrangements were inadequate for a project of its size, complexity and risk.

The BBC said it was disappointed with the tribunal’s decision, but the company has already moved on, with the organisation’s former controller of research and development Matthew Postgate appointed as its new CTO last month.

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