Nine Cambridgeshire council workers sacked in one year after disciplinary hearings
Nine Cambridgeshire County Council employees were sacked last year following disciplinary hearings, data has revealed.
A Freedom of Information Act request to Cambridgeshire County Council found that there were a total of 57 disciplinary hearings over the last three years.
In the 2024/25 financial year, there were 22 disciplinary hearings with nine resulting in the employee’s contract being terminated. This was higher than the year before, 2023/24, when there were just seven hearings and less than five dismissals.
To protect privacy, exact figures for numbers under five have not been provided. In 2025/26, there were 28 disciplinary hearings but less than five of these resulted in the employee being sacked.
The most common reasons for disciplinary action were breach of policy and procedure and safeguarding, with 13 cases of each across the three years. This was followed by inappropriate communication or behaviour, with 11 cases, and health and safety with ten cases.
There were less than five cases each of hearings for absence, bullying, harassment or discrimination, fraud, financial or theft, gross misconduct and negligence.
A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire County Council said they pride themselves “on being a compassionate and inclusive employer”.
They said: “That does not mean that we avoid dealing with inappropriate or unacceptable conduct by our employees – the Council is equally committed to achieving high standards across our workforce of more than 4,500 people. Disciplinary hearings, where necessary, occur following robust and fair investigation processes.
“Importantly, disciplinary processes do not and should not always result in the dismissal of employees. Other sanctions, such as warnings, are available to the Council and are applied where appropriate. The FOI request did not ask for details of these outcomes, it only asked about dismissals.”
In 2025, a council worker was sacked after the county council was scammed out of more than £90,000 in a bank mandate fraud.
A fraudster had submitted falsified documents to change the bank details of a contracted home-to-school transport supplier and four payments totalling £93,000 were sent to the fraudster’s account.
By the time it was discovered, Cambridgeshire Police found that the “suspected fraudster had left the country,” according to council documents.
The officer in charge of verifying changes of bank details said they called the supplier and spoke to the owner to verify the change, but the council found they had not done this.
They were dismissed for gross misconduct after falsifying a document to say they had conducted these checks, which the council said could have prevented the fraud.