[2025] UKUT 041 (AAC)

In oral evidence at the appeal hearing, the Appellant stated that on 11 April 2020, she was the “sleep-in” person i.e., the staff member who undertakes the overnight shift. She said that she came on duty at 5pm on that particular shift and there was a verbal handover from the day staff as usual. One of the duties of the sleep-in person is to write up the daybook when they start their shift. This takes place in a handover, whereby the staff member finishing the daytime shift, explains what the service user did that day and it is the responsibility of the sleep-in person to write this up. She explained that the manager knows that this is the system. The sleep-in person is held accountable if the daybook is blank.

The Appellant stated that on 11 April 2020, she did not take AO away from her accommodation at all, thus she did not accompany AO to the bank to withdraw money from her account. She said it was someone on day shift who had supported AO to withdraw the money. Her oral evidence was that she had written the entry into the daybook about the withdrawal having taken place that day and signed it as the person making the entry, not the person who accompanied AO to the bank. She said she did not know who had taken AO to the bank. Had she known, she would have written this in her daybook entry.

To support her account, the Appellant provided the staff rota for 11 April 2020 to show who was working that day. This was a document admitted at the outset of the hearing (see paragraph 36). It was noted that four members of staff had worked that day, and the Appellant was noted on the rota as working a 3-10pm shift. The rota did not show that she was on a “sleep in” shift. When asked about this by the panel, the Appellant explained that the sleep-in shift is not recorded on the rota. Instead, she explained, it was common practice that the staff member doing the 3-10pm shift on one day, followed by 7am-2pm shift the following day, was automatically designated to be the sleep-in person to cover the night in between those two shifts. The hours between the end of one shift at 10pm and the start of the next shift at 7am, were the sleep-in hours. She explained that she was unable to start her shift at 3pm as arranged on 11 April 2020 as she was house hunting, so she had verbally agreed with her manager her start her shift at 5pm. This later start was not recorded on the rota as it was informally agreed with her manager close to the start of her shift, and long after the rota had been prepared. When asked in cross examination why she had not mentioned her later than scheduled start to her shift before, the Appellant stated that she did not explain this in her disciplinary meeting or in the disciplinary hearing as her employer did not ask.

The Appellant repeated, in oral evidence, the common practice for one member of staff to withdraw money for a service user and for another member of staff to enter the transaction in the cashbook/daybook. She reiterated that the entry in the daybook for the 11 April 2020 simply stated that AO had been supported to withdraw cash but not that it was the Appellant who supported her. She stated that the initials “AA” simply indicated who had made the entry in the daybook, not who had taken AO to the cashpoint. The Appellant submitted that this was the DBS’ mistake of fact as the DBS had assumed that her initials meant that she had supported AO to withdraw the cash, and thereafter wrongly assumed that she had taken AO’s money.

The Appellant then went on to say that the initials “AA” next to the entry in AO’s cashbook relating to the cash withdrawal on 11 April 2020 where not hers, and that she did not write that entry. She asserted that someone else had written it. In evidence, she agreed that “AA” were her initials but explained that the “AA” written next to the entry for 11 April 2020 in the cashbook was not the way she wrote “AA”. The Appellant explained that she writes an “M” and crosses it through in one go whereas the “AA” on 11 April 2020 cashbook entry was two separate “A”s written next to each other. She directed the panel to various entries in the cashbook and highlighted the two different ways that the initials “AA” had been written. For example three entries dated 13/1/2020 in AO’s cashbook [96]show an “M” crossed right through, whereas the entry above on 11/1/2020 [96] shows two separate “A”s next to each other. The Appellant stated that the latter entry is not hers as she does not write “AA” in this manner. She did not know who would have made this entry.

In cross examination, it was pointed out to the Appellant that in herNovember 2020 disciplinary meeting with her employer, she had accepted that the cashbook entries with the initials “AA” were hers. She stated that she only realised the different styles of writing “AA” after that meeting. She went on to dispute the record of that meeting. She said that she had been asked, “Are those your initials?” referring to the initials “AA” next to the relevant entries in AO’s cashbook, to which she replied, “Yes my initials are AA.” However, she said the record of the meeting recorded that she had been asked, “Are your initials AA?”. The Appellant found these to amount to different questions. The Appellant stated in evidence that she had requested a copy of the interview recording from her employer to check the accuracy of the written record. She said it had not been sent to her either by the employer or by the DBS and asserted that the DBS had erred in law by conducting their investigation on the assumption that the transcript of the employer’s interview was accurate, when they should have listened to the actual recording instead. The Appellant stated that she had also asked the DBS to obtain the hard copy of the cashbook to show them the difference between the two different types of “AA” initials, but they had not done so. She submitted that this was a further error of law.

In cross-examination, the Appellant maintained her assertion that someone else had written her initials three times for the entries in the cashbook on 11 April 2020 [103]. She said she did not know who had done it and she knew of no reason why someone would do it. She just knew that it was not her. She said that there were agency staff on shift that day and one of them may have withdrawn the money, taken some of it and recorded her initials in the cashbook. When asked why she had not mentioned to the DBS the fact that agency staff were also working that day, she said it was because she only realised as time went on. In response to questions from the tribunal, the Appellant said that there was one other member of staff on shift when she started her shift at 5pm on 11 April 2020. That was the team member who was on the rota to work from 8am-3pm but she stayed late to do the handover to the Appellant who was arriving late. She had been asked to do so. In closing, the Appellant repeated her denial of the theft, repeated her denial of making the three cashbook entries on 11 April 2020 and once again challenged the accuracy of the record of the disciplinary meeting with the employer in November 2020.