Worker unfairly accused of subscribing to ‘Cougar’ dating site with work email wins £120,000

A manager who was unfairly accused of subscribing to the website 'Hot Cougar Dates' with his work email has won almost £120,000 in compensation.Chris Tweedie became the victim of accusations that he had signed up for the sultry site when the work inbox received four emails offering 'cheap sex dates'.The account on the website allegedly had a 'selfie' of the manager with 'a bare shoulder' - so the company sacked him for gross misconduct.

However Mr Tweedie had been swept up in a power struggle between the company's directors and said that this was merely a 'scattergun' approach to try to get him fired.When he took his case of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal, it agreed that the investigation had 'sought' to sack him from the off.He was awarded £119,248.

40 for lost earnings after it was found that the 'cougar' website had likely been used as an excuse to give him the boot.Mr Tweedie started working as a manager at Edenbeck Ltd in 2019 and had a wide-ranging set of responsibilities.It is a facilities management company based in Chesham, Bucks, whose services included asbestos removal and helping manage government sites like prisons.

It is run by a father and son - Stuart Mayall, the father, was the finance director while his son Chris Mayall was the managing director.The relationship between the father and son directors broke down over the course of Mr Tweedie's employment and they began trying to cut one another out of the company.In July 2024, Stuart Mayall offered Mr Tweedie the role of Director of Operations should he gain control of the company.

However he was attempting to get the manager to 'pledge his commitment and loyalty to him which he wasn’t prepared to offer' - which made Mr Mayall 'lose his temper'.Over the coming months Mr Tweedie began attending meetings with Chris Mayall and not accepting orders from his father.This led Stuart Mayall to brand the manager 'a maverick', and he organised an investigation which 'sought' for his dismissal.

He was suspended in October 2024 for a number of breaches of conduct, and in subsequent meetings more misconduct claims were piled onto Mr Tweedie that had not been properly investigated.In a meeting in December, four emails were shown to him that were alleged to be 'evidence to indicate misuse of the company’s computer and email facilities by subscribing and receiving inappropriate emails'.In the company's staff handbook it said that 'unauthorised or inappropriate use of email, internet and/or computer systems' could count as gross misconduct.

The emails, from November and December of that year, were from 'Hot Cougar Dates, Cheap Sex Dates and Dating Cell'.Mr Tweedie denied knowing anything about the emails and pointed out that they were received after he had been suspended.He asked 'why would he sign up to emails knowing others had access' to his email account, and said he 'felt he was being victimised'.

He added that he 'felt like this was a scatter gun approach trying to get something to stick' so that he could be fired and removed from the father-son power struggle.It was put to Mr Tweedie that the 'hot cougar dates account is associated with him' because the emails were in his inbox rather than spam or junk, and that the profile picture was a selfie of him with 'a bare shoulder'.open image in galleryMr Tweedie took his case of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal (Getty/iStock)However the investigating officer did not check to see if the photo of him was publicly available and could have been used without his knowledge.

Mr Tweedie said he was 'deeply aggrieved' by the 'baseless accusations', but on December 20, 2024 he was summarily dismissed.One of the reasons cited was his 'IT misuse' and that he had 'lied in his denials'.The manager was offered to appeal but he thought the process would be 'biased', so instead took his claim of unfair dismissal to an employment tribunal in Watford.

Employment Judge Rebecca Tuck KC agreed that the investigation into his 'improper' IT use had no been correctly executed and that therefore he had been unfairly dismissed.She concluded: "Stuart Mayall had a genuine belief that [Mr Tweedie] had subscribed to the websites which [Edenbeck's] policies would properly regard as a misuse of their internal systems."However, this belief was not based on a reasonable investigation.

The emails were all received during [Mr Tweedie's] suspension."There was no investigation as to who else had access to his account, and no consideration whatsoever as to whether [Mr Tweedie] could have been signed up to any websites without his permission."There was not even the most basic of checks to see if [Mr Tweedie] might have responded to similar messages by examining his ‘sent’ or ‘deleted items’, and no critical consideration of why [Mr Tweedie] would have signed up to such sites and retained his subscriptions with his work email account while suspended and having been told that his account was not secure."

I have accordingly concluded that [