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 her stalking claim ‘out of the blue’ as part of a ‘deliberate, contrived and calculated plan to tarnish’ her colleagues, it was told.
Miss Langston said her co-workers at Historic England were trying to ‘exert control’ over her by calling her to attend a meeting.
And she made baseless claims her manager was stalking her through Skype and a dating app.
A tribunal found she wanted to get rid of misconduct issues she faced at work and to cause ‘as much distress as possible for her work colleagues’.
She reported colleagues to police and said 10 co-workers had a conspiracy against her.
Now, after getting fired, she has tried to sue for discrimination and unfair dismissal.
But Bristol Employment Tribunal dismissed her claims.
Miss Langston joined Historic England, the public body that preserves and lists historic buildings and ancient monumnbets, in 2018 and was based in Swindon, Wiltshire.
In 2021, she became an Assistant Systems Accountant, but by December 2022 it became clear she was making a lot of errors despite getting 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 Miss 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 Miss Langston sent Matthew Ulyatt, the head of finance, ‘a series of messages on Teams’.
The Historic England offices in Swindon where Tanya Langston worked
The tribunal heard: ‘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.’
She later claimed it was because she was ‘bored’ due to not being allocated enough work, but regardless Mr Ulyatt told her the ‘bizarre’ messages were inappropriate.
In response, Miss 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, Miss Langston ‘became extremely hostile’ and ‘very passive-aggressive’ because she believed the team were purposefully withholding work from her.
In a meeting in May 2023, she was suspended.
In response, she ‘threateningly’ 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.’
Immediately after her suspension in May, Miss 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 then filled out a bullying and harassment form which claimed that 10 colleagues were possibly in a conspiracy against her.
An investigation was launched and Miss Langston said the ‘stalking had affected her and her family and was online’.
She also claimed it included being required to attend a performance meeting in May 2023 in person because 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, Miss Langston clarified that she also believed Mr Ulyatt had matched with her through a dating app and said things ‘intended to cause her trauma’.
She also had been talking to people on Skype who she decided ‘had no genuine interest in developing a relationship with her’, and assumed they were her managers because their voices were similar.
However, she admitted that she had no evidence and did not know if the people she had spoken to even worked for Historic England.
The investigation drew to a close in July 2023, concluding there was no evidence of stalking.
The report said: ‘The stalking claim may have been malicious.’
Afterwards, the disciplinary investigation against Miss Langston resumed and she was given a warning for her inappropriate messages but allowed back to work.
The hearing heard: ‘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 Miss Langston ‘and those in her team had irretrievably broken down’.
She was dismissed in February 2024, and she appealed the dismissal but it was upheld.
She then 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 difficulty and distress as possible for her work colleagues.
‘The allegations that [Ms Langston’s] dismissal was an act of direct discrimination, discrimination arising from disability or harassment related to disability all fail. They are not well founded and are dismissed.’
