A former Liverpool council director has lost his unfair dismissal case against the local authority.
Nick Kavanagh was the director of regeneration at the city council but was dramatically arrested at the Cunard Building by Merseyside Police as part of the force's Operation Aloft in December 2019. He was subsequently suspended from his chief officer job and was eventually dismissed in March 2021 following a council disciplinary hearing.
Last month, Mr Kavanagh, who has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing, brought an unfair dismissal case against the council to a tribunal, which was held over a number of days at the Liverpool Civil and Family Court. He claimed that the current council chief executive, Tony Reeves, had gone out of his way to construct a case against him and remove him from his job. Mr Reeves and other council witnesses insisted that all proper procedures were followed in dismissing the former top director.
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As part of the hearing Mr Kavanagh called former city mayor Joe Anderson as a witness. Mr Anderson was arrested as part of the same police operation in December 2020. He has not been charged and denies wrongdoing.
A judgement has now been delivered in the case, by Judge Rachel Mellor, who found that Mr Kavanagh's complaint of unfair dismissal was 'not well founded' and has been dismissed.
Much of the tribunal centred on the controversial circumstances surrounding plans for the New Chinatown development site on the edge of Liverpool city centre, and the way the council had deal with the transfer of the site from Urban Splash to a development company known as PHD1.
In his evidence, Mr Reeves said he was contacted in late 2018 by Urban Splash boss Jonathan Falkingham, raising concerns about the site and how Mr Kavanagh had acted over the transfer of the company's interests to PHD1. It was agreed that an independent review would be carried out into the situation and report back.
That review would be followed by a disciplinary investigation and the police investigation that would lead to Mr Kavanagh's arrest in 2019. He was subsequently suspended from his job before being dismissed last spring after a council disciplinary hearing. In his own statement, Mr Kavanagh accused Mr Reeves of lying to that hearing in stating that he had nothing to do with the former director's arrest in 2019.
In making her decision to dismiss Mr Kavanagh's case for unfair dismissal, Judge Mellor said she believed there were legitimate reasons for the city council to have launched the investigation into the New Chinatown case and the disciplinary investigations that followed it. She said: "The circumstances and allegations were not manufactured and they were supported by witnesses and documentary evidence. They were subject to a thorough investigation which the claimant was fully able to participate in. The respondent did have a genuine belief in the claimant’s misconduct."
She said there is 'no basis that Mr Reeves colluded or scapegoated' Mr Kavanagh. Judge Mellor added: "The matters complained of by the claimant, whether viewed individually or collectively, did not result in the respondent acting unreasonably in treating the reason they have found as a sufficient reason to dismiss. The sanction was within the band of reasonable responses. I therefore find the claim is not well-founded and dismiss the claim."
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