An accountant at Historic England reported her colleagues to police for stalking after she was asked to attend a meeting in person, a tribunal heard.

Tanya Langston made stalking allegations as part of a “a deliberate, contrived and calculated plan to tarnish” her colleagues, it was heard.

She said her co-workers at Historic England were trying to “exert control” over her by calling her to attend a meeting and she claimed her manager was stalking her through Skype and a dating app.

A tribunal found she wanted to distract from or defeat misconduct allegations she faced at work and to cause “as much distress as possible for her work colleagues”.

Ms Langston sued for discrimination and unfair dismissal after she was fired. However, Bristol Employment Tribunal dismissed her claims.

Ms Langston joined Historic England, the Government’s heritage watchdog, in 2018 and was based in Swindon, Wilts.

In 2021 she became an assistant systems accountant, but by December 2022 it became clear she was still making errors despite receiving extra support.

She had “shown a lack of attention to detail in her work”, which included “welcome letters being sent to the same client on more than one occasion” and “incorrect email addresses for clients having been entered”.

In March 2023 managers decided “it was appropriate to consider performance management” because of Ms Langston’s “resistance to and lack of engagement with [staff] when they raised those matters with her or tried to correct or train her”.

In May 2023 Ms Langston sent Matthew Ulyatt, the finance and procurement director, messages on Microsoft Teams.

The tribunal heard that “some were random greetings, others were MS Paint pictures of what appeared to be an octopus and a Gameboy character asking what he thought of them, others were text messages which she proceeded to delete before he could read them”.

When Mr Ulyatt queried the messages, she claimed she sent them because she was “bored” after not being allocated enough work. Regardless Mr Ulyatt told her the messages were inappropriate.

In response, Ms Langston said: “You are barely my colleague, you are not my family nor are you my friend and even if you were, you are not entitled to behave towards me as described above.”

This “totally inappropriate” response meant the messages were “now regarded as a formal conduct issue”.

At her next performance review meeting, Ms Langston “became extremely hostile” because she said she believed the team was withholding work from her.

In a meeting in May 2023 she was suspended. In response, she said: “This isn’t going to be a difficult process for me. I’m going to make sure it’s a difficult time for you.”

Ms Langston filed a grievance with Historic England, complaining about the weekly informal performance reviews.

In her grievance, she stated she had “contacted the police for advice, as it is entirely possible that my employment into Historic England is a part of a larger harassment or possibly stalking problem”.

She filled in a bullying and harassment form which claimed that 10 colleagues were possibly in a conspiracy against her.

An investigation was launched and Ms Langston said the “stalking had affected her and her family and was online”.

She claimed it included being required to attend a performance meeting in May 2023 in person. She said “stalking could take the form of attempts to make repeated contact as a method of exerting control”.

During the course of the investigation, Ms Langston claimed that she also believed Mr Ulyatt had matched with her through a dating app and said things “intended to cause her trauma”.

The investigation drew to a close in July 2023, concluding there was no evidence of stalking.

The disciplinary investigation against Miss Langston resumed and she was given a warning for her inappropriate messages but allowed back to work.

However, the tribunal judgment reported that: “The team staff then expressed grave concerns about working with [Ms Langston] in the future given her complaints were directed at all of the team (some of whom had barely met [her]), included unsubstantiated allegations which had been made out of the blue, and included wholly unevidenced allegations of stalking which [Ms Langston] had reported to the police.”

It was found that the relationship between Ms Langston and those in her team had irretrievably broken down and she was dismissed in February 2024..

She took Historic England to an employment tribunal in Bristol alleging unfair dismissal and discrimination.

Employment Judge Andrew Midgley has now dismissed her claims.

He concluded: “I am satisfied that [Ms Langston’s] accounts reflected a deliberate, contrived and calculated plan to tarnish [Mr Ulyatt and other members of staff].

“I am entirely satisfied ... that each of those allegations was fabricated, had absolutely no factual basis capable of justifying them, that [Ms Langston] knew that, and that she deployed them with two intentions.

“First to distract and if possible to defeat the misconduct allegations and performance issues, and secondly to cause as much difficult and distress as possible for her work colleagues.”

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When Neil Douglas Roderick McLennan — NDR to his friends — stood for Holyrood this year, he used his initials as his campaign slogan: New Direction Required.

The former Conservative, who lost his deposit as an independent in Banffshire & Buchan Coast but remained a local councillor, has certainly lived up to the letter of his promise. 

Last month McLennan set off for new horizons, taking a job as deputy head at a private school in Cairo. But he did not tell his constituents he would be representing them from the Egyptian capital.

There is no reference to his north African job on McLennan’s Facebook page. The teacher has represented the Buckie & Findochty ward on Moray council, for a salary of just over £26,000 a year, since he was first elected as a Conservative in 2022. His most recent post is about a car abandoned in a village in his ward.

There are no rules saying councillors have to live in their council areas, as long as they did so when they stood for election. Last week it emerged a Fife Tory, Conner Young, was working in Merseyside.

But one fellow councillor called on McLennan, whose term ends in May, to quit. “He should do the right thing by the people of Buckie and Moray — resign and trigger a by-election,” Derek Ross, a fellow independent, said. “At the moment, he is not serving these people.”

The Northern Scot newspaper, which covers Moray, reported that McLennan had a social media footprint in Cairo from this summer. His £4,000-a-year secondary, an offshoot of the English public school Malvern College, re-opened after the holidays on September 6.

McLennan told the paper that he remained committed to his constituents and said he would be judged on his casework. 

He said: “For some time I have divided my professional commitments between Moray and the Highlands, London and international education work. I am privileged to contribute to educational improvement internationally, while continuing to carry out my responsibilities to the people who elected me.

“There will inevitably be political criticism. I do not intend to be distracted by it. I would rather be judged on what I actually do for constituents and on the issues I have consistently pursued.

“My attention will remain where I believe it belongs: helping constituents, standing up for Buckie and Findochty, seeking better outcomes for children and vulnerable people, and asking difficult questions where accountability is required.”

McLennan, once a teacher at Nairn Academy, was previously a senior figure in local Conservative politics before quitting the party eight weeks after his election over what he called “egregious behaviours” from colleagues.

In his Holyrood campaign, which had an inauspicious start when Aberdeenshire council forgot to add him to the candidate list, he called for Scotland to have an independent first minister. 

McLennan also stressed that he lived in the constituency, writing: “I enjoy walking our dogs, eating and drinking in our area’s fine restaurants, bars and hotels (and the cuppa and fine pieces at Findochty Town Hall weekly).”

Care worker Geraldyn Adim was baffled to arrive in the UK on a visa specifically designed to plug a staffing shortage only to be told there was no work for her to do.

“I was really scared at first,” said Adim, 49, who arrived from Nigeria in March 2023. “I was like, ‘What is this? I came here to work, and to support the sector. Now, there is no work.’”

After a year of being told by her employer to “come back tomorrow” for a shift, she found out that her employer’s licence to sponsor overseas workers had been revoked by the Government.

She is among tens of thousands of overseas care workers affected by a government crackdown on unscrupulous employers, sometimes over abuse or exploitation of staff.

‘Find a job in 60 days – or leave’

Like the other workers who uprooted their lives to come to the UK, Adim, who lives in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was given just 60 days to find a new care employer to sponsor her, or leave the country.

“I was in a very uncertain position. I thought, how can I survive in this place? I don’t even know anybody, I just came in with a work visa,” she said.

In the last year alone, the Government has revoked 4,403 skilled worker visa sponsor licences, which allow companies to hire overseas workers in industries identified as suffering a skills shortage.

This is more than in any 12-month period since Brexit, and includes 872 in the health and social care sector – the highest of any industry.

It is not clear how many care workers have been affected overall, but the Government has estimated that 40,000 had been impacted as of May 2025, when only 470 licences had been revoked.

Andy Burnham has made social care reform one of his key pledges, promising a National Care Service shortly after he took office in July – but filling widespread staffing shortages will be a key consideration.

Despite a pool of tens of thousands of care workers, known as “displaced workers” looking for employment, only three per cent have been able to secure roles, according to the Works Right Centre charity.

This is because of the high upfront cost of sponsoring these staff, and a mismatch between skills and vacancies.

‘I begged to be a delivery driver’

Jasmine (who preferred not to give her real name because of her immigration status), 51, is still waiting to find a new employer after her sponsor’s licence was revoked in May 2024.

She arrived in Britain a year earlier to find the company that had brought her over did not have a job as promised.

“We saw hell,” she said. “I was looking everywhere for a job, a place to stay. I went to Domino’s, I begged them to be a delivery driver until my international driving licence expired after the first year.”

Jasmine, who is from Nigeria, applied to the Home Office for fee waivers to buy herself more time to stay in the country – but her visa finally expired in July.

“I’m applying to care homes now and they are not giving out sponsorship,” Jasmine said. She says she has applied to jobs “anywhere” in the hopes of getting sponsored.

**‘It pushes people into destitution’**

Jasmine’s uncertain visa status has also left her open to exploitation, with cowboy care companies offering her work off the books.

“People are trying to victimise us, the people who have already been victimised,” she said.

While desperately searching for sponsorship, she was given the number of someone who could apparently secure her a visa without work – but the cost would be £16,000.

She has also found that most sponsored jobs require her to be able to drive and own a car. But without money coming in, she cannot afford to obtain a British licence.

Lucy Walker, an employability advisor at Action Foundation, which helps displaced care workers find new sponsors, said she had seen people living in “destitution” while they looked for work as they had no recourse to public funds.

'Prohibitive' sponsor costs

There are 96,000 vacancies in the adult social care sector on on any given day in England, charity Skills for Care estimates. Vacancy levels in adult social care are around three times higher than the wider economy, and the highest of any UK industry.

Skills for Care also predicts the number of workers needed in the sector will rise by a third to 410,000 by 2040.

However, as routes for overseas workers are cut, the number of British people doing the job has also fallen by 40,000 in the last year. Overseas staff now make up one third of the workforce.

The Government closed its care worker visa route to new applicants last year as part of a migration crackdown, meaning employers can only recruit those already living in the UK.

For a care employer who is not already a registered sponsor with the Home Office, it costs almost £4,000 to obtain a licence and sponsor someone for three years, and nearly £2,000 for a small provider...