A former school nurse has successfully challenged a fitness-to-practise (FtP) case against her, after she was hounded out of her job by colleagues as part of a “witch hunt” against her.
Laura Hindle was suspended from the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register in 2024, after having been reported six years prior by four nurses she line managed while working at the health centre of the private boarding school Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.
“Their collective grievance, though copied to the NMC, was not truly motivated by a concern to protect the public interest”
Alan Bates
After a lengthy appeal process, deputy High Court judge Alan Bates has overturned the suspension on the grounds that the FtP panel failed to give her a fair hearing, and did not properly scrutinse the evidence put before it.
Ms Hindle joined Stonyhurst in 2016, having previously worked in accident and emergency, neonatal intensive care and the police in nursing posts.
As nurse manager, she oversaw a small group of other nurses and healthcare assistants (HCAs).
Mr Bates, in his ruling, noted that the working environment Ms Hindle entered was “difficult” and “unpleasant”.
Two of the four nurses who made the complaint against her had unsuccessfully applied for the job she got, and the judge said they were “keen to criticise her”.
Across the next two years, relations between Ms Hindle and four of the nurses she line managed deteriorated.
In 2018 they submitted a collective grievance about their concerns, which was sent to both the school and the NMC. The regulator, in response, initiated FtP proceedings against Ms Hindle.
She left her job at the end of 2018, later working at a children’s hospice where no issues about her conduct were found.
However, she also left that job in 2023 by mutual agreement, reportedly because of the time the FtP proceedings were taking.
She faced 32 disciplinary charges from the regulator, which the court summarised in six categories:
Physically manhandling a student
Speaking to students in an aggressive or dismissive manner
Speaking inappropriately about a student with other staff
Failure to properly keep records for prescription drugs
Breach of confidentiality
Dishonesty when informing management about the health centre’s staffing needs
Ms Hindle admitted to three charges relating to record keeping, but denied all others.
In January 2024, the FtP panel found Ms Hindle’s practise was impaired, having sided with the complainants’ version of events for most of the charges.
She was suspended from practise for six months, with an 18-month-long interim suspension order put in place while she appealed the case.
Ms Hindle did so on the grounds that the panel had failed to provide “reasons for preferring certain evidence” and have sufficient regard for her evidence.
Mr Bates, having reviewed the evidence presented during the hearings, found that Ms Hindle’s appeal had merit.
One nurse’s account of Ms Hindle having allegedly grabbed a student was found to be factually inaccurate, due to CCTV footage clearly showing evidence to the contrary.
This charge was dropped, but the panel did not, Mr Bates found, sufficiently account for this when considering the reliability of other evidence.
“The consequence of the panel’s siloed approach was that it did not consider this important dimension of a fair factfinding approach in this case,” he said.
The panel was also found to be too easy on certain witnesses. Ms Hindle’s lawyer, at one point, pressed one of the complainants on an inconsistency in her evidence, but was told by the panel to “tweak” her questioning when the witness claimed she was being aggressive.
The judge said the lawyer was just “doing her job”.
Mr Bates described the allegations from the four nurses towards Ms Hindle as a “blizzard” and a “nuclear missile intended to have a decisive impact in making it impossible for the appellant to continue in her job”.
Having reviewed the evidence presented in Ms Hindle’s FtP hearings, he said: “Their concern was to oust a boss they resented.
“Their collective grievance, though copied to the NMC, was not truly motivated by a concern to protect the public interest.”
He agreed with characterisations from other witnesses that the complaints were “tittle-tattle” and the result of a “witch hunt” against Ms Hindle.
“It’s been incredibly tough and my mental health has suffered”
Laura Hindle
Mr Bates wrote, in summary: “The crux of the appellant’s case was that the complainant nurses had created a catalogue of fabricated and exaggerated allegations against her, to rid themselves of a manager with whose decisions they disagreed and whose job they thought should have gone to one of them.
“The [FtP] panel’s failure to properly grapple with assessing the credibility and reliability of the key witnesses had the consequence that it failed to deal adequately with the appellant’s case.”
The NMC was ordered to pay £7,453 in costs.
Meanwhile, Mr Bates also criticised the NMC for the length of time Ms Hindle’s case took to conclude: “[By 2024], the allegations made against the appellant by the collective grievance had already been hanging over her for approaching six years.
“The allegations thus related to alleged incidents that were said to have occurred, in some cases, around seven years previously.
“Even allowing for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the time taken by the NMC to progress this matter has been far too long.”
Following the judgement being handed down, Ms Hindle told Nursing Times she was “grateful” to the court for “seeing the case as it is”.
She said: “The NMC didn’t hear my side or believe it. I’m just grateful I had support to appeal.”
Ms Hindle was supported in court by legal counsel from the Royal College of Nursing, and throughout the process by NMC Watch, a campaign group that supports nurses through FtP proceedings.
“It’s been incredibly tough and my mental health has suffered,” she added.
“But I hope I can get back to work soon and put this horrific time behind me. I see so many people in NMC Watch with similar stories – this has to change.”
Cathryn Watters, founder of NMC Watch, said the case “epitomises all that is wrong with the FtP process”.
In response to the judgement, an NMC spokesperson said: “While we’re unable to discuss individual cases, we can confirm we’re aware of the High Court judgment, and as an organisation which is aiming to learn and improve, we will carefully consider the points the judge has made about our processes.”
