A former security manager at the BBC has been awarded £31,600 after he was sacked after being accused of spending 12 hours trawling through CCTV to see who had left the kitchen in a mess, an employment tribunal heard.
Mohammad Rakib worked for security contractor Mitie at BBC Wales headquarters but was sacked for gross misconduct for his unnecessary use of CCTV.
Rakib had joined a precursor of Mitie in 2013 as a security officer in London. After various mergers the employer eventually became Mitie in 2021. In 2020 he transferred to Cardiff and, in April 2022, he was promoted to duty security manager, supervising a team of five security officers at the BBC Central Square building until his summary dismissal in September 2023.
Rakib was required to attend an investigation meeting on 23 June 2023, conducted by Mitie investigator Martyn Barrass, having been accused of breaching data protection rules by looking through CCTV without having the correct licence in May 2023.
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Rakib at one point said he was trying to help someone find a lost bag; at another time he said that he couldn’t remember the reason, the tribunal heard.
But another security worker told investigators Rakib had told him he spent 12 hours viewing the tapes “to catch who had made a mess in the kitchen”.
Barrass informed BBC corporate security manager Joel Adlington of the matter. He told Adlington: “In my opinion, his story changes at least twice in a short time, suggesting he is concocting a lie. I have a statement confirming him admitting to accessing the CCTV and also an admission during interview. I will now escalate this to a full gross misconduct hearing.”
Adlington responded that the use of the BBC’s CCTV systems by a non-licensed staff member “for what appears to be personal benefit or superfluous use is unacceptable and may put us in breach [of] ICO regulations and GDPR legislation”.
He added: “I must put on record that it is a significant breach of trust between the staff member and the organisation and you have my full support in your assessment of gross misconduct.”
A disciplinary meeting was held on 8 September 2023 over the alleged CCTV misuse as well as a claim that Rakib had bullied a security officer, but that was not proven.
A trade union representative said that at the disciplinary, there were problems with the evidence provided, including that there was no clear definition of what the GDPR breach was and that Rakib had not been given the company policy covering the breach.
Rakib denied he had spent 12 hours looking for who made a mess in the kitchen. He also said: “When it comes to data breach, I don’t think it’s possible, the investigation is quite limited. No one has a CCTV licence, we’ve been told we don’t
need one.”
Rakib was sacked on 25 September 2023 for gross misconduct deriving from a serious breach of his data protection obligations and specifically, on 8 May, reviewing CCTV footage in the control room despite not possessing a suitable licence, which was a direct breach of GDPR.
He appealed the decision a few days later, on the grounds that the investigation was flawed and that Barrass had ignored mitigating factors around practice and guidance. Rakib said if a CCTV licence was required, then Barrass did not have one when using footage against him in the disciplinary and that Barrass had the footage on his phone.
The appeal failed and Rakib made a claim for unfair dismissal at the employment tribunal.
In her ruling, Employment Judge Rachel Harfield said her starting point was that an employee has to be on notice that their employer considers something to be gross misconduct and a potentially sackable offence, so that the employee knows not to do the thing, or appreciates the risks that come with doing it. In this case, she said she had found no detailed written internal policy that Mitie could point to which said what Rakib could or could not do.
She said: “There was no clear picture before the respondent as to what the claimant’s training was, and they had not given him any training themselves or any standard operating procedures on CCTV usage, for example.
“The respondent had the claimant’s account of what was happening on the ground in Cardiff, and that it was done with the knowledge and direction of managers and the BBC, which would have suggested the claimant did not necessarily know he should not, from his employer’s perspective, be reviewing CCTV.”
She added that Rakib had been painted early in the process as a “potentially rogue operative and someone who had not told the truth”. This risked causing “real risk of conscious or subconscious bias” which, given the client relationship with the BBC, could lead to the wrong action being taken.
Judge Harfield noted that, after his dismissal, Rakib had to take lower-paid jobs and was now only earning the minimum wage as a security officer.
Following the ruling, an award of £31,637 was agreed, most of which comprised the unfair dismissal compensatory award.
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