A broadband executive has been awarded more than £100,000 after blowing the whistle about his company’s engineers illegally trespassing on people’s property.
Shawn Nolan was chief technology officer at Freedom Fibre when he raised concerns about fibre engineers trespassing, after it emerged they were carrying out work on private land without consent in 90 per cent of the cases.
The company builds fibre infrastructure and provides an alternative network in the northwest of England.
But the company’s CEO told him ‘it’s sometimes easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission’ before making him redundant, a tribunal heard.
Now an employment judge has found that Mr Nolan was unfairly dismissed and awarded him £105,500 in compensation.
The tribunal concluded that Freedom Fibre Ltd flouted rules around permission because they viewed them as ‘burdensome bureaucracy’.
Mr Nolan took up his £135,000-a-year role with Freedom Fibre in September 2022.
The business was regulated by Ofcom and needed to obtain legal agreements used for the deployment of fixed line broadband, known as wayleaves.
The tribunal heard that prior to Mr Nolan joining the business, issues had already been raised internally.
A document created on the matter suggested that in 90 per cent of the cases, the business had built on land without consent and had committed trespass.
The panel heard that the issue of wayleaves came to Mr Nolan’s attention soon after he joined when one of his staff approached him.
The executive said the employee told him that the business was ‘not consistently obtaining wayleaves’.
Shawn Nolan raised concerns about fibre engineers trespassing, after it emerged they were carrying out work on private land without consent in 90 per cent of the cases
In early November 2022, Mr Nolan raised the matter with chief financial officer, Darren Woods.
He again brought up the issue during a senior leader team meeting, which was attended by Mr Woods and CEO Neil McArthur.
Recalling the meeting, Mr Nolan said Mr McArthur told him ‘It’s sometimes easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission’ in response to his concerns.
Employment Judge Zoe Thompson said the CEO was ‘dismissing’ Mr Nolan’s concerns and ‘condoning the practice of not getting wayleaves when they ought to’.
In March 2023, another senior employee said that the delay in obtaining the documents was ‘becoming more of an issue’ with their business customers.
He claimed that members of their sales team said it is a ‘barrier to sale’ and proposed they take a ‘calculated risk’ in deciding when to obtain a wayleave.
It was heard Mr Nolan found this ‘deeply concerning’.
In another senior leadership team meeting later that month, Mr Nolan again discussed the contractual agreement.
He mentioned the ‘consequences of proceeding without wayleaves’, which include loss of amenity, economic loss and damage to property.
The panel said Mr Nolan was being ‘more explicit’ than he had in the past in referring to the consequences of failure to obtain wayleaves.
This was because he was worried about the proposal to proceed with business installations ‘in a way that it knew was illegal’.
During another meeting in April, Mr Nolan raised that he believed that the business was committing legal breaches.
He referenced an incident at his previous employer in which they were sued after failing to obtain wayleaves.
Then, in early May, Mr Nolan was asked to attend a meeting with Mr McArthur and Mr Woods and told he was being made redundant, a decision which left him ‘completely baffled’ at first.
The business informed him the main reason for his dismissal was his performance and that they were offering redundancy to him to ‘soften the blow’.
The executive claimed this was unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal.
Judge Thompson said the business was ‘systematically not obtaining build wayleaves’ and were ‘committing trespass’.
‘They saw wayleaves as a burdensome bureaucracy and were prepared to break the law if on their analysis the risk of them being sued was low and/or any damages they had to pay out if they were sued were outweighed by the profit they made,’ she added.
Upholding his claims, Judge Thompson found that Mr Nolan was ‘not prepared to toe the company line’ and was ‘deeply troubled’ by the proposal to bypass wayleaves.
She said there was a ‘callousness’ to how he was dismissed – as he was given no warning and had also been involved in a car crash that day.
The judge said: ‘(Mr Nolan) struck us as a man of great integrity, who was clear in his view that law should be obeyed, regardless of whether you agree with it.
‘His level of integrity was in stark contrast to the impression we formed of the (Network Plus Services) witnesses, who came across as being prepared to break the law if they could do so without the costs to their business being too high.
‘(Mr Nolan’s) ethical approach was clearly at odds with the approach of the (businesses) senior management, Mr McArthur and Mr Woods, which is why they chose to dismiss him when it became obvious that he was not backing down and indeed becoming more vocal in his protestations that (they were) not obtaining wayleaves before installing their apparatus on private land when they should be.’
He was awarded £105,510.12 as a remedy for his successful unfair dismissal claim.