Horsfield Menzies has done something unusually useful for an adversary: it has published the ruler. Partner Laura McLellan writes about impartial investigations, evidence, sensitive handling and good employment practice. The Cepac file contains something rather different. My discrimination complaint received a same-morning corporate explanation before the contemporaneous WhatsApp had even entered the room. My later complaint about Horsfield Menzies solicitor Sam Butler produced no investigation outcome communicated to me at all. Then, when my disability-linked reactions became useful as conduct evidence, investigative enthusiasm suddenly arrived by the fucking pallet.
Horsfield Menzies has volunteered its own website as Exhibit A.
That seems only fair. Employment lawyers spend enough time deciding what everybody else’s emails, WhatsApps, medical records and badly chosen sentences mean. TCAP can surely extend the same professional courtesy.
So begins Horsfield Menzies : Blog vs Behaviour, a series built around one uncomplicated operating system. Horsfield Menzies publishes polished employment-law articles explaining how organisations should behave. I open the Cepac litigation file and compare those standards with what happened when discrimination, mental health, complaints, professional conduct and a disabled litigant in person stopped being seminar material and started generating correspondence.
No séance required. No imaginative reconstruction. The firm supplies the brochure. The file supplies the behaviour.
Brochure Sam vs File Sam was the prototype. Now the whole fucking website has entered evidence.
For the first exhibit, Horsfield Menzies could scarcely have chosen a better subject.
Workplace investigations.
Exhibit A : Laura McLellan’s Own Fucking Article
Horsfield Menzies partner Laura McLellan authored the firm’s article announcing its Workplace Investigations Unit.
McLellan is not an anonymous content writer tasked with filling an empty Tuesday on the corporate blog. Horsfield Menzies presents her as an employment-law partner with a particular specialism in investigations. Her professional biography refers to interviewing people, reviewing evidence and producing investigation outcomes.
Laura McLellan did not act in my Cepac litigation.
She has nevertheless performed a valuable service for Blog vs Behaviour.
She wrote the measuring stick.
McLellan’s article says HR investigations have always formed part of good employment practice. Independent investigations, she explains, are increasingly used to ensure an impartial process. Whistleblowing, bullying and harassment complaints receive special mention because they require “careful and sensitive handling”.
The firm’s wider workplace-investigations sales material adds the machinery. Documentary evidence gets reviewed. Relevant witnesses are interviewed. Investigators approach the exercise objectively. Matters are triaged according to complexity and sensitivity. Reports contain findings and recommendations. Quality assurance comes afterwards.
Apparently, the investigators are not “tame”.
Lovely.
Frame the webpage. Laminate Laura McLellan’s article. Put one copy in reception and another beside the Cepac files.
Because my experience provides two separate opportunities to test the sermon.
One complaint pointed at their client.
The other pointed at their own solicitor.
Neither appears to have inspired anything resembling the investigative appetite eventually directed at me.
Complaint One : 04:35 In. 09:52 Out.
At 04:35 on 8 October 2024, I emailed Cepac with a specific disability-discrimination complaint.
The allegation was straightforward. A Page recruiter had called me about a job and offered an interview. I had been told it would take place after the August bank holiday and that somebody would telephone the following week to arrange a suitable time.
During that recruitment conversation, I explained the gap in my employment. I said I had taken time away because of health problems and recovery. When asked to elaborate, I disclosed treatment for a mental-health condition.
Then the promised follow-up disappeared.
I told Cepac that I considered what had happened discriminatory and gave the company an opportunity to explain itself before I pursued further action.
At 09:52 that same morning, Cepac HR Business Partner Maria Walker replied.
The alternative history had already arrived.
According to Walker, my CV had reached the recruiting manager but I had not been shortlisted. She said the recruiting manager would not have known about the mental-health information discussed with the agency recruiter. Instead, the apparent explanation was that Page had simply failed to tell me that I had been unsuccessful.
Then came the little chronological jewel.
Walker said she would pass my feedback to the recruitment agency.
After giving me the answer.
Do not make the mistake of calling that five hours and seventeen minutes of investigation. That would be unexpectedly charitable.
Five hours and seventeen minutes is merely the entire outer window between my email leaving my hands and Walker’s finished explanation arriving back. We do not know when she opened it. We do not know when anybody started making enquiries. The investigative labour might have occupied three hours, thirty minutes or the time required to forward an email and wait for somebody to reply.
What the paper proves is cleaner.
04:35 – discrimination complaint sent.
09:52 – substantive corporate explanation received.
Maria Walker’s email gives us the destination.
It does not show the journey.
The Answer Beat The Evidence Into The Room
That matters because Walker had not seen my contemporaneous WhatsApp evidence when she supplied the explanation.
Immediately after the August recruitment conversation, I had messaged someone about what happened. The surviving exchange recorded “Interview next week” and discussed the training wage.
That message existed before the Tribunal claim, before ACAS and before Horsfield Menzies entered the picture. Nobody sat down months later and reverse-engineered a convenient line for litigation. The WhatsApp was already sitting there quietly while everybody else was still getting dressed.
Yet the same-morning answer came before Cepac had been confronted with it.
Walker did not identify a recruiter interview in her response. No call-log review appears in the email. There is no explanation of which recruitment records were examined or how the competing accounts had been tested. Nor was I asked to provide the evidence behind what I had said before the conclusion arrived.
Later material showed Page held system notes, emails and call-log information capable of illuminating the recruitment sequence.
So we had a disputed conversation.
We had contemporaneous evidence.
We had records.
Witnesses.
We had exactly the kind of factual mess Laura McLellan now says an investigation can sort out.
This was not a rabbit hole.
It was the fucking front door.
Complaint Two : This Time The Allegation Named Their Own Solicitor
Then came the second test.
By March 2025, Horsfield Menzies itself was no longer merely the law firm sitting quietly behind Cepac’s defence. Its own conduct had become part of my complaint.
On 23 March 2025, I sent a detailed internal complaint directly to Angus Menzies, Simon Horsfield and Daniel Rubin about Horsfield Menzies Senior Associate Sam Butler.
It did not vanish into a generic complaints inbox.
The email went to the people at the top.
My complaint alleged, among other things, misuse of disability-related medical information, the firm’s contact with my GP or medical centre, statements I considered misleading, aggressive costs pressure and obstructive handling of case correspondence. I asked Horsfield Menzies to investigate, explain its position and stop the conduct I was complaining about.
This was not TCAP kicking the door in.
This was before the category pages, before the permanent search record and before Angus Menzies and Simon Horsfield started learning what happens when you give me a reason to remember a name.
I used the fucking doorbell.
The following day, I chased them politely. I asked for the basics: acknowledge the complaint, tell me whether an investigation would happen and give me some indication of when an outcome would be provided.
No investigation outcome was communicated to me.
No named investigator appeared.
And no scope was supplied.
No findings came back.
No recommendations landed.
Of course, no remedial action was explained.
Perhaps something happened internally. Fine. Horsfield Menzies can identify it.
What reached the complainant was fuck all resembling Laura McLellan’s shiny investigation architecture.
The Client Got An Answer. The Solicitor Got Category Zero.
Now put the two complaints together.
When the allegation concerned Cepac, Maria Walker produced a substantive explanation the same morning through a process her email does not describe.
When the allegation concerned Sam Butler and Horsfield Menzies itself, the partners received a detailed complaint and follow-up but no investigation outcome was communicated to me.
Different routes.
Same accountability vacuum.
The client-side complaint produced an answer before the key contemporaneous WhatsApp had been supplied.
The solicitor-side complaint produced no communicated findings at all.
That second route already has a TCAP name.
Category Zero.
Horsfield Menzies now sells paying organisations a beautifully arranged menu of investigation services. Complexity gets triaged. Sensitive allegations get specialists. Discrimination belongs in the more serious categories. Evidence is reviewed, witnesses are interviewed and reports get written.
Category Zero is what happened when the complaint pointed back through the shop window.
No visible triage.
No identified investigator.
Clearly no scope.
No findings.
No recommendations.
An extremely efficient professional service whose principal deliverable, from the complainant’s side of the desk, was nothing.
Laura McLellan writes that independent investigation helps ensure impartiality.
Apparently independence becomes harder to locate when the allegation has a Horsfield Menzies email address attached to it.
Then Horsfield Menzies Found The Magnifying Glass
Here is where the comparison stops being merely awkward and becomes fucking magnificent.
Because investigative curiosity was not dead.
Far from it.
It simply found a more commercially convenient subject.
Me.
Once my communications, emotional reactions and public commentary became useful to Cepac’s conduct case, the evidential appetite returned as if somebody had connected the building to three-phase power.
My emails mattered.
My blog mattered.
X account? Mattered.
My complaints mattered.
Previous proceedings mattered.
Tribunal correspondence mattered.
My wording mattered.
Medical evidence mattered, mainly as something to contest while the resulting distress was being harvested into conduct.
Suddenly, nobody was satisfied with a same-morning conclusion.
Screenshots needed collecting.
Posts needed cataloguing.
Communications needed indexing.
Chronologies needed building.
The same firm whose internal complaint process had produced no outcome communicated to me became extremely fucking interested in documenting what I did after complaining.
That is not a side issue.
It is the whole piece.
191 Pages For The Reaction
By April 2026, Horsfield Menzies expressly relied on two dedicated strike-out evidence collections.
The first, covering my communications and blog material, occupied pages 1409 to 1512 of the combined bundle.
The second, covering X material, ran from pages 1513 to 1599.
That is 191 pages of bespoke strike-out evidence before we even begin discussing the rest of the correspondence and conduct material spread through the wider file.
The combined hearing bundle itself reached 1,657 pages excluding the index.
Not every page concerned my conduct. TCAP does not need to pretend it did. Pleadings, case documents, submissions and other material occupied substantial portions.
The sharper fact is sitting there in the index.
When my reaction became useful, Horsfield Menzies created dedicated documentary collections for it.
Now compare all three investigative appetites.
The complaint against Cepac: same-morning explanation before Walker had seen the WhatsApp.
The complaint against Butler: no investigation outcome communicated to the complainant.
The case against my reactions: communications, blogs and X material selected into bespoke strike-out evidence running across 191 pages inside a 1,657-page bundle.
Apparently, the firm did not lack curiosity.
It had a fucking target preference.
Investigate The Reaction, Not The Complaint
That is the real Blog vs Behaviour thesis.
Investigate the reaction, not the complaint.
The underlying discrimination allegation concerned what happened during recruitment after disclosure of a mental-health condition.
My complaint about Sam Butler concerned how a solicitor and his firm subsequently treated a disabled litigant in person during that dispute.
Neither became the great documentary obsession.
I did.
TCAP has repeatedly described the mechanism as weaponising disability-related reactions as conduct.
Pressure goes in. A disabled person with medically documented difficulty regulating emotions under stress reacts. Emails follow. Complaints follow. Public criticism follows. The reactions become evidence. Evidence becomes conduct. Conduct becomes the argument for disposing of the case without ever trying the original discrimination merits to conclusion.
It is bureaucratic alchemy.
Feed distress into one end of the machine and a tabbed exhibit comes out of the other.
The client allegation gets an answer.
The solicitor allegation gets silence.
The disabled claimant gets fucking indexed.
The Medical Evidence Was Sitting In Their Own Submission
Horsfield Menzies cannot seriously say the disability context was hidden from view.
Its own later submissions reproduced GP evidence referring to depression, anxiety, difficulty controlling emotions and particular problems managing frustration under stress. Another medical letter addressed emotional outbursts, severe anxiety, low mood, extensive emails and slips in tone in the context of distress.
The firm had the words because it put them into its own fucking document.
Yet those disability-linked outputs were still capable of being curated into the conduct narrative used against me.
That is where Laura McLellan’s phrase “careful and sensitive handling” stops sounding like generic HR wallpaper.
It becomes a measuring instrument.
Horsfield Menzies knew I was saying the pressure was worsening my emotional regulation. The partners had separately received a complaint about Butler. The Tribunal file contained my allegations about the firm’s conduct. Nevertheless, my reaction to that environment became far more thoroughly documented than either complaint that helped create it.
TCAP calls that disability bullying with pagination.
The firm is free to call it robust litigation.
The pages remain the same.
Even My Medical Appointment Got More Investigative Curiosity
There is another revealing example.
When Horsfield Menzies opposed one of my postponement requests, Sam Butler told the Tribunal that the firm had spoken with the medical centre responsible for my appointment.
Horsfield Menzies said no personal medical information had been disclosed. Nevertheless, somebody had contacted the practice, asked about appointment availability, obtained information about alternatives and used that information to argue that I should move my medical appointment rather than the Tribunal move the hearing.
Forget the argument over propriety for a moment.
Look at the mechanics.
When Horsfield Menzies wanted information, somebody knew exactly what to do.
Pick up a telephone.
Contact the relevant organisation.
Ask questions.
Obtain information.
Put the result into correspondence.
Investigative curiosity was not merely alive.
It could fucking dial.
Yet my internal complaint about the solicitor involved in that very episode produced no communicated investigation outcome.
The contrast almost writes itself.
When the firm wanted to investigate my doctor’s appointment, it found the phone.
When I asked it to investigate its own solicitor, Category Zero apparently had no extension number.
Laura McLellan’s Investigation Unit Meets The Actual File
This brings us back to the author.
Laura McLellan says independent investigation can ensure impartiality and that sensitive complaints require careful handling.
Horsfield Menzies now advertises specialists, triage, documentary review, witness interviews, clear findings and quality assurance. It presents itself as experienced enough to investigate discrimination, bullying, whistleblowing and sensitive allegations involving senior people.
Great.
TCAP has two free case studies for the training deck.
Case Study One: a disabled applicant alleges that a promised interview disappeared after disclosure of mental-health treatment. A substantive denial arrives the same morning before the complainant has supplied contemporaneous WhatsApp evidence supporting the interview account.
Case Study Two: the same disabled person later complains directly to the firm’s owners about its own Senior Associate, alleging disability-related medical misuse, aggressive costs pressure and litigation conduct. No investigation outcome is communicated back.
Then there is Case Study Three, although perhaps this one belongs in the advanced module.
The disabled complainant reacts.
Suddenly everyone finds the filing cabinet.
The Wrong Investigation Won
On 24 April 2026, the Tribunal proceeded in my absence and struck out my claims because of the manner in which it found I had conducted the proceedings. A £20,000 costs order followed.
The underlying disability-discrimination merits never reached a completed merits trial.
That distinction is the fucking architecture.
A recruitment complaint entered the system.
A same-morning corporate explanation came back.
I challenged the account.
The dispute escalated.
I complained about the solicitor.
No investigation outcome came back from the firm.
My disability-related emotional regulation deteriorated under pressure.
The resulting emails and public commentary became progressively more valuable as conduct material.
Horsfield Menzies helped curate substantial portions into dedicated strike-out evidence.
The conduct route reached judgment.
The original discrimination allegation did not.
So no, TCAP’s criticism is not that Horsfield Menzies does not understand investigations.
The Laura McLellan article demonstrates that it understands them perfectly well.
The problem is what seemed worthy of investigation.
The client?
Same-morning explanation.
The firm’s solicitor?
No communicated outcome.
The disabled claimant’s reactions?
Get the fucking archive boxes.
The Blog Has Entered Evidence
That is Horsfield Menzies : Blog vs Behaviour.
We are not going to trawl the firm’s website for generic words such as “fairness” and scream hypocrisy whenever somebody uploads an employment-law update.
The method is much cleaner.
When Horsfield Menzies publishes on disability, TCAP opens the disability file.
When it writes about complaints, we examine complaints.
If its partners publish on investigations, mental health, proportionality, grievances, workplace culture or professional conduct, we put those words beside what happened when the same subjects appeared in the Cepac litigation.
Article by article.
Standard by standard.
Blog by blog.
File by fucking file.
Laura McLellan has supplied a particularly good opening exhibit because her subject is the one Horsfield Menzies’ own record keeps inviting us to examine.
Investigations.
The first complaint pointed at Cepac.
The second pointed at Sam Butler.
The investigation machine eventually pointed at me.
04:35 – discrimination complaint sent.
09:52 – Cepac explanation received.
The WhatsApp had not yet been supplied.
Months later, Angus Menzies, Simon Horsfield and Daniel Rubin received my internal complaint about Butler.
No investigation outcome was communicated to me.
Then Horsfield Menzies helped build dedicated collections of my communications, blogs and X posts covering 191 pages of strike-out evidence.
The allegations did not get an archive.
The complainant did.
That is not TCAP decorating the evidence.
That is the fucking filing system.
Laura McLellan wrote the brochure.
Cepac and Horsfield Menzies supplied the behaviour.
I’ll keep turning the pages.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Horsfield Menzies – Workplace Investigations Unit
- Horsfield Menzies – HR Investigations
- Horsfield Menzies – Laura McLellan
- TCAP – Angus Menzies And Simon Horsfield Got The Sam Butler Complaint. Welcome To Category Fucking Zero
- TCAP – Brochure Sam Vs File Sam
- Employment Tribunal – Thompson v Cepac Limited and Page Outsourcing UK Limited
- Maria Walker email chain dated 8 October 2024, retained by TCAP.
- Contemporaneous WhatsApp record concerning the August 2024 recruitment conversation, retained by TCAP.
- Complaint dated 23 March 2025 to Angus Menzies, Simon Horsfield and Daniel Rubin, retained by TCAP.
- Follow-up complaint correspondence dated 24 and 25 March 2025, retained by TCAP.
- Horsfield Menzies, First Respondent’s Response to Claimant’s Skeleton Argument, updated 21 April 2026.
- Horsfield Menzies correspondence concerning contact with the medical centre, March 2025.