Karen Hall has proved a formidable – and expensive – opponent for her former employer, Durham County Council. Stuart Arnold reports

ON the day I visit Karen Hall, her home is shrouded in thick fog – a good metaphor for the gloom that has enveloped her life over more than ten years.

Durham County Council's "staggering" £155,000 interest payment in teacher bullying case

We chat in her open plan kitchen and a pile of papers are laid out on the worktop, just a fraction of the paperwork that has built up over the course of numerous tribunal hearings.

She is quietly spoken, but plainly a character who doesn’t give up very easily.

Mrs Hall, 43, talks briefly about her husband, Andrew, to whom she has been married for 15 years, and praises his “fantastic support”.

“Bless him, he has had to endure a lot,” she says. “He’s had to put up with me crying, listen and be there when I have been humiliated and demeaned.”

Some of those involved in Mrs Hall’s case and who were criticised for their treatment of her have now left the council, but the majority remain, including Ernie Hurrell, the chairman of governors at West Cornforth Primary School and the headteacher, Janet Sarsfield. Meanwhile, former deputy head Janice Wynn is now in charge of Belmont Primary School, in Durham.

“I don’t understand how with the atrocious things I was put through, no disciplinary action has been taken against anybody,” she says.

“In one meeting I was five hours in a room and was repeatedly told that I should resign to try to get us to keep quiet and go away.

“I had just lost my mam and I came out and cried and cried because I felt like I could not go on.”

She describes herself as a worker and says she wouldn’t be happy to live off her £1.5m award.

To date, she has applied for more than 100 jobs, having accepted she will not go back to teaching, but has not been successful with any.

When I put it to Mrs Hall that some may feel the award she has received is far too big, she says: “Money won’t get you back your health, your career or make me feel better. I still have nightmares about how I was treated, I am haunted by it.

“I am grateful for the money, but it cannot repair the damage, the physical and emotional pain that I have felt.”

Mrs Hall, who has been diagnosed with severe depression, recently went on holiday with her husband for the first time in 14 years, partly in a bid to get her health back on track. But she acknowledges she has a long way to go to get back to where she was.

“I have lost a career that I love, I lack confidence, every part of me has changed,” she says.

“I don’t even recognise who I am when I look in the mirror.

For a period I wouldn’t go out, I would comfort eat.

I haven’t looked after myself through this.

“I am like a shell and need to be built back up.”

What does the £1.5m award include?

Loss of earnings past and future £585,831
Pension loss £329,102
Injury to feelings £15,000
A payment to cover the taxable element £421,493

Events that led to former teacher’s £1.5m compensation award.

September 1994 – Karen Hall begins teaching at West Cornforth Primary School.

2001– Becomes a ‘literacyleader’

2007 – Instigates Employment Tribunal proceedings over her treatment at the school.

May 2008 – Tribunal finds Mrs Hall had suffered 18 separate acts of victimisation between March 2004 and January 2007. It also finds serious complaints and disclosures made by her were suppressed by Durham County Council and school governors.

July 2008 – DCC accepts the findings of the Tribunal in their entirety.

December 2008 – Mrs Hall is awarded £59,321. The Tribunal makes four recommendations following a request bythe council, including restoring her literacyleader role and supporting her in a National Professional Qualification for Headship.

She carries on working at the school, but complains none of the recommendations are being implemented and the victimisation is continuing.

August 2009 – Mrs Hall is made redundant.

November 2009 – Tribunal agrees to review the issue of future loss.

May 2010 – The Northern Echo reveals details of the case for the first time February 2011 – A review judgement finds the respondents have “deliberately and flagrantly”

chosen to ignore the tribunal’s recommendations and concludes Mrs Hall’s selection for redundancy is a consequence flowing from the earlier acts ofvictimisation.

July 2012 – Durham County Council fails with its first Employment Appeal Tribunal, having described the findings from the review judgement as “illogical and perverse”.

October 2012 – The Court of Appeal refuses the local authority leave to challenge the findings. It concludes the employment appeal tribunal had dealt correctly with all the appeal points.

November 2013 – A review of remedy hears representations from both parties over the level of compensation payable to Mrs Hall. In later setting out the reasons for calculating the sum of £1.37m, a judge says Durham County Council should have “taken the bull bythe horns” to sort the situation out and “do the right thing”.

February 2015 – Another Employment Appeal Tribunal in London hears challenges from the council on 26 separate points. All but two are rejected, one of which is later dropped before going to a full appeal hearing.

July 2015 – Emerges Mrs Hall is in line for a £1.5m payout, rounded up from £1.37m after the recalculation of tax.

September 2015 – Council fails appeal at a further Employment Appeal Tribunal after claiming it was “manifestly excessive” to assess Mrs Hall’s chances of becoming a head teacher by age 50 as being 100 per cent. A further costs award is made against the council and governors.

October 2015 – Council announces an internal review of Mrs Hall’s case.

December 2015 - Headteacher Janet Sarsfield and governors still remain in post at West Cornforth Primary School.