Bank worker wins £490,000 payout after being unfairly dismissed for using the N-word in anti-racism training session

• Father-of-two Carl Borg-Neal, 59, from Andover, Hampshire, won £490,000
• Know who the diversity trainer was? Email [email protected]

A bank manager who was unfairly sacked for seeking advice on what to do if he heard a black person using the N-word at work has won a £490,000 payout.

Father-of-two Carl Borg-Neal, 59, from Andover, Hampshire, raised the question during a Lloyds Bank race education training session on July 16, 2021, but in doing so inadvertently used the word in full himself. He apologised immediately.

It left the woman leading the exercise apparently so ‘badly distressed’ that she had to take a week off – a ‘key reason’ for the decision to dismiss Mr Borg-Neal for gross misconduct.

The former mayor and councillor blamed dyslexia and successfully claimed disability discrimination.  

This week, he was awarded almost £500,000 in damages. Added to Lloyds’s legal costs and tax, the bank has a bill of nearly £1million.

The payout is the culmination of a two-year battle to clear his name after working for the bank and its affiliates for 30 years.

He told The Telegraph:  ‘I often wonder if I wasn’t a white middle-aged male would I have had to go through everything I went through. There is no way of telling. You are bottom of everything.’

Do you know who the diversity trainer was? Email [email protected]

This week, he was awarded almost £500,000 in damages by an employment tribunal that said Lloyds had unfairly sacked Mr Borg-Neal.

The London Central Employment Tribunal panel said the manager was thinking of ‘the use of the N-word by black people in rap lyrics or to each other when playing basketball’ and did not intend to cause hurt, adding that his question was valid and without malice. 

The tribunal added that the bank had discriminated against him on account of his dyslexia, which leads him to ‘spurt things out before he loses his train of thought’.

The distraught 59-year-old is unemployed and although he has accepted the £500,000 granted to him, what he really wanted was his old, ‘perfect’, job back.

Moreover, even though he has received a payout worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, Lloyds has never apologised for treating him like a ‘pariah’ and alleging he was racist – which Mr Borg-Neal firmly denies.

Lloyds did not respond when asked whether they would apologise to Mr Borg-Neal by MailOnline. 

At the time of the initial ruling, Lloyds Bank said: ‘We have a zero-tolerance policy on… racist language and are considering appealing the judgment made.’

Today, a Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson said: ‘We received the judgement in August and accept its findings.’

The Lloyds stalwart, who had worked at the branch in question for 17 years and oversaw part of the bank’s payments systems, was told not to reach out to former colleagues or friends after he was sacked.

The tribunal’s 46-page ruling said the case raised serious questions over how top establishments like Lloyds Bank handled ‘very sensitive issues’ in diversity training. 

The panel in question took place in July 2021 and was attended over the Internet by around 100 Lloyds Bank managers.

Mr Bord-Neal asked how a situation should be approached when an ethnic minority person used a term usually perceived as offensive to their own community.

The trainer didn’t understand the question, so Mr Borg-Neal said: ‘The most common example being [the] use of n***** in the black community.’

People in the training session described how the training manager told Mr Borg-Neal off and threatened to expel him from the course.

Mr Borg-Neal said the manager ‘went mad’ and even though he tried to apologise she just kept ‘shouting’ at him.

The former Lloyds employee has been left deeply hurt by his sacking and the accusation of racism.

He added:  ‘Couldn’t Lloyds have been more mature and admit their mistake and apologise publicly? They made a massive error and they won’t say sorry.’

The tribunal said: ‘It has hurt the claimant a great deal that he has been branded as a racist’. 

It told Lloyds ‘not to make comments to the press which give a wholly misleading impression’.