Tribunal rejects relief claim by former boss of struggling art charity

An employment tribunal has judged that the former chief executive of a drawing charity is unlikely to succeed with a claim of unfair dismissal after she raised concerns about the organisation’s management and finances.

Jane Barnes, who was executive director of The Big Draw from August 2022 until June 2024, argued she was made redundant for making “protected disclosures” about wrongdoing at the charity.

Barnes made a claim for ‘interim relief’, in which a claimant is reinstated or re-engaged by the employer, or their pay continued, until the tribunal makes its final decision.

Employment Judge Bruce Gardiner’s judgment said the “essence” of Barnes’s case against The Big Draw is that the charity “took an early decision that she should be dismissed and then contrived a redundancy process which she argues was a sham”.

But Gardiner ruled that, while there was an arguable case that Barnes’s disclosures had  “at least influenced” her dismissal, he wrote: “I do not accept that she has a pretty good chance of successfully showing that this was the principal reason”.

The tribunal noted its decision was a preliminary “broad-brush assessment of the evidence” and that it was “not making any findings of fact”.

Funding challenges

The charity has been experiencing financial challenges since 2023, when the US company Concepts, which had funded half its running costs, said it would not be continuing with this from January 2024.

Barnes raised these issues with the board on 20 October 2023, and they were also discussed at a full trustee meeting on 13 December 2023.

On 14 December, Barnes sent an email to board members which is “said to contain two protected disclosures”, the judgment says – the first on the charity’s financial state and the second “regarding whether it was necessary to hold an AGM”.

The email says the charity has been “operating on a business model where the core activity does not bring in sufficient income”, adding that it is “not advisable” to be “disproportionately reliant on the support of one major sponsor”.

Referring to the organisation’s Memorandum of Association, Barnes also wrote, “I can see we need to be running an AGM”.

‘Antagonistic and belligerent’

In emails to two board members, chair John Stachiewicz then complained of what he saw as an increasingly “antagonistic” and “belligerent” attitude from Barnes. He wrote to one that “her aggressive approach isn’t helping” and noted it was a “deeply tricky situation”.

A third alleged protected disclosure took place in an email from Barnes to Stachiewicz following a disagreement between them about the best way to secure future funding.

Barnes argued she received “obstructive responses to any suggestion to secure funds”, which were “relentless”. She added her team was being put under “unnecessary pressure… with the uncertain financial future and subsequent job insecurity”.

In that email, she wrote that while “pressure and positive stress is expected”, it felt that a “relentless negative ‘dis-stress-‘ was “being dished out in spades”.

Barnes added this “causes people to feel disempowered, and the short point is that it makes people ill, and no one should ever do that to another human being – it is unnecessary”.

“I just feel overwhelming sadness that the focus is never on the positives or solution-focused,” she wrote. “I have served on and worked with many boards, particularly with Arts Council England, I have never encountered anything quite like this.”

A final hearing

The judge wrote: “The issue for me to decide is whether the claimant has a pretty good chance of establishing at the final hearing that the principal reason for her dismissal was that she had previously made a protected disclosure”.

He acknowledged that “it appears that the trustees were frustrated with their perception of the claimant’s attitude”.  But he added that “on the current evidence, it would appear the principal reason for her dismissal was that there was a redundancy situation and urgent and significant cost savings needed to be made”.

While the claim for interim relief was rejected on this basis, the judgment notes “the evidential picture may be different once all the evidence has been adduced at a final hearing”.