Regional Employment Judge Sarah-Jane Davies has made a spectacular return to The Cepac Files. Earlier in 2026, Davies declined to pursue Page Outsourcing’s redacted correspondence, apparently considering it irrelevant to a hearing about my conduct. I asked whether evidence of discrimination might help explain that conduct, then received no substantive answer. Fast-forward to 28 October, and Davies’s name suddenly reappears when Newcastle Employment Tribunal takes an interest in my language towards Employment Judge Andrew James. Apparently the court possesses an excellent detection system for naughty words, while questions about potentially relevant evidence can spend months rotting beneath the fucking floorboards. Welcome back, Houdini. The black marker has been expecting you.
There is a peculiar kind of magic practised by British institutions. It requires no elaborate equipment, no rabbits and certainly no audience participation. A troublesome question arrives, somebody in authority declares it irrelevant, and the matter disappears into an administrative void. The person who asked may continue writing, but the correspondence produces little beyond institutional silence. Months later, the same authority suddenly reappears when something else attracts its attention. Official letterheads return, procedural explanations materialise and everybody gets to admire the miraculous efficiency of the machinery.
Newcastle Employment Tribunal has provided a particularly entertaining demonstration. Regional Employment Judge Sarah-Jane Davies previously featured in my attempts to understand Page Outsourcing’s heavily redacted correspondence. The documents concerned my disability discrimination complaint, yet the respondents were preparing to attack my conduct. I questioned whether the concealed material might explain the circumstances surrounding that conduct. It was a perfectly ordinary enquiry about evidence and causation, although Newcastle appeared to regard it as an invitation to swallow a live hedgehog.
On 28 October 2026, Davies’s name returned for an entirely different reason. Newcastle had received emails criticising Employment Judge Andrew James, who struck out my discrimination claim and ordered £20,000 in costs. Some of my language was offensive, which was neither accidental nor particularly difficult to detect. Suddenly, the institution found enough interest in my correspondence to refer it to a regional judge. The original evidential question remained unanswered, but the profanity had apparently activated the fucking emergency lighting.
The Recruitment Complaint That Started Everything
The underlying case was Thompson v Cepac Limited and Page Outsourcing UK Limited, Employment Tribunal number 6019060/2024. It began with an unsuccessful recruitment process in August 2024. Nobody had yet embarked on an elaborate campaign to upset judges or provide employment solicitors with enough internet material to furnish a small library.
Page Outsourcing approached me about a production role at Cepac in Darlington. I maintain that its recruiter indicated an interview would follow after the August bank holiday. During our conversation, I disclosed information about my mental health and extended absence from work. The expected follow-up never arrived. Cepac subsequently cited applicant numbers and its shortlisting decision when explaining why I had not progressed.
Those accounts differed, which made the documentary evidence important. Page handled the initial recruitment process and held information about my health. Cepac relied on Page as its recruitment intermediary. Establishing who knew what, and when, required more than a reassuring paragraph about applicant volume.
Instead, the proceedings gradually became dominated by my conduct, correspondence and publications. The respondents sought to end the case without a conventional merits hearing. Meanwhile, I continued attempting to establish what happened during recruitment. An allegation of disability discrimination had evolved into an extraordinary assessment of whether the claimant was sufficiently objectionable to justify throwing the entire fucking case into the furnace.
Page Outsourcing And The Black Marker Orchestra
Page’s subject access disclosure revealed internal activity that raised further questions. The material included correspondence concerning my discrimination complaint, discussions about obtaining advice and references to my previous Cummins Employment Tribunal proceedings. One email carried the subject “Fw: Discrimination”, which rather helpfully identified its relevance to anyone struggling to understand the nature of the dispute.
Unfortunately, substantial parts of the disclosed material contained redactions. Names disappeared, sections of email chains became inaccessible and black rectangles occupied spaces where useful information might have appeared. Page invoked third-party information protections when explaining its approach. Such protections can be legitimate, and I have never claimed that submitting a subject access request gives me unlimited access to somebody else’s private correspondence.
The problem was where those black boxes appeared. They surrounded material concerning the recruitment process and my discrimination complaint. Page held records about the interview discussions, medical disclosure, internal response and subsequent contact with Cepac. Those were precisely the matters I wanted to understand.
Instead, the disclosure resembled a fucking crossword puzzle whose most important answers had been covered in permanent marker. Whether the hidden passages mattered remained an open question. That uncertainty was the reason I wanted them examined, not proof that they contained anything incriminating.
The Wrong Candidate And The Right Questions
The disclosure exercise became even more entertaining when Page included information concerning another individual with the same name as me. Apparently, the organisation could operate its black marker when handling correspondence relevant to my complaint. Yet the machinery became rather less discerning when another man’s candidate information wandered into the disclosure pack.
TCAP has previously examined that episode without publishing the individual’s private details. Nevertheless, it remains an extraordinary illustration of the problem. Page managed to conceal information I wanted to understand while supplying material concerning somebody who had nothing to do with my complaint.
That administrative embarrassment did not automatically invalidate every redaction. Nor did it establish that Page had discriminated against me. It did, however, provide another reason to question how carefully the organisation had managed its records.
I wanted the Tribunal to examine the disputed material and establish whether it mattered. That was the request, stripped of theatrical flourishes and legal jargon. Apparently, even this modest proposition required a fucking expedition to the summit of judicial Mount Everest.
Enter Sarah-Jane Davies, Keeper Of The Irrelevant
Regional Employment Judge Sarah-Jane Davies entered the picture through Newcastle’s handling of applications and disclosure concerns. Tribunal administration confirmed in January 2026 that attachments had reached the case file and referred to Davies. By then, I had spent considerable time questioning what material judges could see, how documents reached the judicial file and why important correspondence appeared to disappear into the administrative machinery.
The redaction issue eventually received a response attributed to Davies. The position communicated to me was that the material did not matter to the forthcoming hearing. That hearing concerned my conduct rather than the underlying discrimination allegations.
On the surface, the distinction sounds perfectly respectable. Tribunals regularly restrict preliminary hearings to particular questions. Judges do not need to investigate every aspect of a claim whenever somebody submits an application. Case management necessarily involves deciding which issues require attention at each stage.
But these particular questions were hardly independent. The respondents wanted Newcastle to determine whether my conduct had made a fair hearing impossible. Their allegations concerned communications and reactions arising during a bitter recruitment dispute. If Page’s concealed material could support my account of what happened, why would it automatically lack relevance to the circumstances surrounding those reactions?
One Question, No Apparent Answer
I put that question back to Davies. My follow-up was short enough to fit comfortably on a fucking postage stamp: “if they expose discrimination could that not be relevant to my conduct”.
There was no elaborate legal theory hiding inside it. I wasn’t demanding that the Tribunal accept my allegations before examining the evidence. Nor was I claiming the hidden material necessarily proved discrimination. The question concerned causation and context.
Suppose the underlying documents supported part of my account. Might that information affect how the Tribunal understood my subsequent reactions? Could it matter when deciding whether those reactions justified ending the entire discrimination claim?
Those questions did not require the court to excuse offensive behaviour. They required consideration of the circumstances in which the behaviour arose. That distinction became especially important once the respondents sought the exceptionally serious remedy of strike-out.
As far as the correspondence available to me establishes, my follow-up received no substantive answer. I did not obtain an explanation addressing why potentially relevant evidence about the underlying dispute could not inform the conduct assessment. The proceedings continued towards April, and the question remained unresolved.
Houdini had entered the cabinet, the curtain had fallen, and the fucking audience was apparently expected to go home.
Conduct Does Not Exist In A Vacuum
There is a fundamental difference between establishing that somebody behaved offensively and understanding the circumstances surrounding that behaviour. I have never maintained that experiencing discrimination would automatically entitle somebody to insult judges, solicitors or opposing parties without consequence. The Tribunal was entitled to examine my conduct and consider appropriate procedural controls.
Nevertheless, context mattered. My mental health difficulties, medical evidence concerning emotional regulation under stress and the history of the proceedings formed part of that context. If disputed recruitment evidence could help establish what prompted the conflict, its possible relevance deserved consideration.
The respondents were seeking an exceptionally serious outcome. They did not merely want an offensive email excluded or restrictions placed on future correspondence. Their applications sought to terminate the discrimination proceedings altogether.
Against that background, my question was hardly a decorative flourish. It concerned whether the Tribunal could fairly assess conduct while leaving potentially relevant contextual evidence unresolved. Perhaps the redacted passages contained nothing useful. Alternatively, they might have supported or undermined aspects of my account.
The only reliable way to establish their significance was through an appropriate evidential process. Black rectangles cannot testify, regardless of how impressive the fucking stationery might look.
The Tribunal Had Other Options
Newcastle could have considered the nature and relevance of the disputed material through its case-management powers. That would not necessarily have required publishing private information or granting unrestricted access to every internal email.
A judge could consider whether particular passages justified disclosure, protection or further examination. Different safeguards might apply depending on the material. The important question was whether the information could affect matters the Tribunal needed to decide.
My complaint was not that every redaction proved wrongdoing. It was that the decision to treat the material as irrelevant left a specific question unanswered. The respondents wanted the Tribunal to condemn my conduct, while I sought to examine circumstances potentially connected to that conduct.
Without a substantive response, the two issues remained separated by a procedural distinction I had expressly challenged.
It was a remarkably efficient arrangement, provided nobody insisted on looking behind the fucking black rectangles. The institution could proceed with the conduct hearing while the claimant continued wondering whether relevant context remained hidden.#
The Cummins Judgment Became A Character Reference
The previous Cummins proceedings added another layer of irony. Page had searched for my earlier Tribunal history after I raised discrimination concerns. That earlier judgment also featured in the surrounding arguments about my behaviour and disability-related explanations.
The old case had become relevant to how others characterised me, although the Cepac dispute concerned a different recruitment process. It involved different organisations, different events and a subsequent period of my life.
This illustrates the danger of treating someone’s litigation history as a substitute for examining a fresh complaint. An unsuccessful discrimination claim does not make somebody incapable of experiencing discrimination again. Equally, a previous judgment cannot conclusively determine someone’s health during later proceedings.
My circumstances had evolved after the original Cummins hearing. Additional medical records documented difficulties affecting my emotional regulation under stress. I supplied evidence addressing those issues because they mattered to events occurring in 2025 and 2026.
Yet the earlier Tribunal case became another convenient reference point. Page’s disclosure showed that my Cummins history had attracted attention. The subsequent proceedings examined my publications and correspondence extensively. What began as a disagreement about an interview increasingly became an assessment of the kind of person the institutions believed I was.
Meanwhile, the original recruitment question remained somewhere beneath the fucking archive boxes.#
Three Hundred And Thirty-One Pieces Of Conduct
By April, Cepac’s representatives had assembled extensive material concerning my behaviour. Their conduct evidence covered approximately 150 communications and publications, alongside 181 posts on X. That amounted to roughly 331 items supporting their argument that my conduct had made a fair hearing impossible.
The respondents were entitled to present evidence they considered relevant. Quantity alone does not establish unfairness. Nevertheless, the contrast with the unresolved disclosure issue is difficult to ignore.
My words, publications and complaints received extraordinary attention. Page’s partly obscured correspondence about the original discrimination complaint did not receive the same visible examination before the case ended.
The conduct evidence allowed the Tribunal to inspect my reactions in remarkable detail. By contrast, the circumstances allegedly contributing to those reactions remained contested and partly hidden. It resembled a security system that recorded every disturbance in glorious high definition while the camera covering the preceding events faced a fucking brick wall.
A distinction between merits and conduct was legitimate. However, that distinction could not automatically answer every question about their relationship. Context, disability and proportionality might still matter when considering whether terminating a statutory claim was justified.
Whether the redacted material could affect those questions was precisely what I wanted examined.
April Arrived, And The Claim Went Into The Furnace
Employment Judge Andrew James proceeded with the decisive hearing on 24 April 2026 in my absence. The judgment issued on 29 April struck out the claims and ordered me to pay £20,000 in costs to Cepac.
The underlying discrimination allegations never received a conventional merits hearing. Witnesses did not undergo the ordinary process of giving evidence and answering questions about the disputed recruitment decision.
That distinction matters. The Tribunal made findings about conduct and the continued viability of the proceedings. It did not determine after a full merits trial that every aspect of Page and Cepac’s recruitment process had been lawful.
Nevertheless, the practical result was devastating. The claimant’s behaviour became the reason the court would not determine the underlying discrimination allegations. Meanwhile, my earlier attempt to examine potentially relevant material had encountered the explanation that the evidence did not matter to a hearing about conduct.
It created a grimly circular predicament. The original complaint could remain untried because the conduct had become unacceptable. Yet evidence concerning that complaint apparently lacked relevance to understanding the conduct.
There is a certain elegance to this arrangement if you enjoy procedural machinery that eats its own fucking purpose.
The Black Marker Has Legal Competition
Disputes over redacted information are hardly new. In Frewer v Google UK Limited and Others [2022] EAT 34, the Employment Appeal Tribunal examined orders concerning confidential and commercially sensitive information. The case addressed the importance of properly considering relevance and restrictions on litigation material.
That judgment did not establish an unlimited entitlement to unredacted documents. It also involved different facts from Page’s subject access disclosure. Nevertheless, it illustrates why courts must distinguish legitimate confidentiality concerns from the requirements of fair proceedings.
A subject access request and Tribunal disclosure serve different purposes. An organisation may have legitimate grounds to protect third-party information in one process. That does not automatically settle whether particular material must be disclosed during litigation.
My concern was that the possible relevance of Page’s concealed correspondence remained unresolved before the conduct allegations became decisive.
If the Tribunal had properly considered the information and found it irrelevant, a reasoned explanation could have addressed my question. Alternatively, further examination might have been necessary. The precise answer depended on the facts and the applicable procedural requirements.
Legal procedure should not resemble a magician’s sleeve. Documents ought not disappear into one end while certainty emerges from the other without anybody explaining the fucking trick.
October Arrived, And Houdini Returned
Fast-forward to 27 October 2026. I had been publicly challenging aspects of Employment Judge James’s judgment, including its treatment of allegations attributed to an external publication.
My criticism was hardly restrained. I used insulting language, challenged the judgment and made my contempt for the proceedings abundantly clear. Nobody could reasonably confuse the correspondence with a diplomatic invitation to afternoon tea.
Newcastle subsequently informed me that three emails sent on 27 October had been referred to Regional Employment Judge Davies. The referral concerned language directed towards Employment Judge James.
The correspondence dated 28 October addressed the applicable procedural position, including Rule 67 of the Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024. It also indicated that Newcastle would take no further action.
Rule 67 concerns correction of clerical mistakes and accidental slips. It does not provide a general mechanism for reopening substantive disagreements about a judgment. Reconsideration and appeals operate under different procedures.
Those distinctions were legitimate matters for the Tribunal to explain. The October response did not impose a fresh penalty or purport to decide the earlier redaction issue.
But the contrast was almost too fucking good to waste.
The Remarkable Return Of Sarah-Jane Davies
Earlier in the proceedings, Davies had been associated with a refusal to pursue Page’s redacted material. My follow-up question about whether that evidence could help explain my conduct remained unanswered.
Now the same regional judge’s name had returned because Newcastle considered my language towards another judge worthy of attention.
Well, well, well. Apparently an unresolved evidential question can become part of the furniture, but call a judge something particularly offensive and the administrative machinery remembers where it keeps the correspondence trays.
The two matters arose at different stages and involved different procedural rules. I recognise that distinction. Nevertheless, it remains legitimate to compare the institution’s responsiveness to each issue.
One concerned potentially relevant evidence in proceedings that ended with strike-out and a substantial costs order. The other concerned the language I used while challenging the resulting judgment.
The latter produced an explanation of the applicable procedure. My earlier question about the relationship between discrimination evidence and conduct received no equivalent substantive resolution that I could identify.
Houdini had returned, although the cabinet containing the original question remained stubbornly fucking locked.
Newcastle’s Magnificent Profanity Detector
Courts have legitimate reasons to control abusive correspondence. Judges and Tribunal staff should not have to tolerate unlimited personal insults simply because somebody disagrees with a decision. My language was plainly offensive, and I have never pretended otherwise. I’m generally not polite to hostile people, title or no title.
But Newcastle’s response invites comparison with the earlier disclosure dispute. The institution could identify my objectionable vocabulary, refer the correspondence and explain the appropriate procedural route.
When I asked whether potentially relevant evidence might explain conduct being used to terminate my claim, the follow-up received no substantive answer that I could identify.
The contrast resembles an industrial quality-control system that detects a rude label on a defective engine but overlooks the missing components inside. An inspector objects to the handwriting on the complaint form while the machinery continues making a noise like somebody has poured cutlery into a fucking cement mixer.
Perhaps Newcastle should commission an evidential equivalent of its language detector. Whenever somebody asks whether disputed documents might explain conduct under examination, an alarm could illuminate above the judicial filing system.
The warning would read: CAUSATION QUESTION DETECTED – PLEASE CONSIDER BEFORE REPRIMANDING THE AUTHOR.
Admittedly, developing such sophisticated machinery might stretch the institution’s technological resources. Nevertheless, expecting a court to consider the relationship between evidence and conduct should hardly require a fucking engineering breakthrough.
What The Reappearance Does Not Establish
The October correspondence does not establish that Davies deliberately ignored my earlier question. Nor does it prove she knew what Page had concealed or intended to disadvantage me. The available material cannot support those conclusions.
Similarly, I cannot establish that the hidden correspondence necessarily proved discrimination. Its contents remain the subject of the original dispute.
The documented criticism is narrower. I challenged redactions while the respondents sought to condemn my conduct. A response attributed to Davies treated the material as irrelevant to the forthcoming hearing.
My subsequent question concerned whether evidence supporting the underlying discrimination allegation might help explain that conduct. As far as the correspondence establishes, the enquiry remained without a substantive answer.
Months later, Davies’s name returned when Newcastle addressed my language towards Employment Judge James. The Tribunal explained its procedural position but did not revisit the earlier issue.
That sequence deserves scrutiny without requiring speculation about secret motives. A questionable case-management decision does not become immune from criticism because a judge made it. Nor does public disagreement require allegations of elaborate judicial conspiracies.
Sometimes an institution’s visible handling of a dispute provides a sufficiently embarrassing picture all by itself.
The Original Question Is Still Standing There
The central issue has changed remarkably little. Page supplied a partly redacted record of communications surrounding my discrimination complaint. Those records included internal discussions, advice and a search for my earlier Cummins Tribunal history.
When the respondents shifted towards allegations about my conduct, I sought examination of the redactions. My concern was that the underlying material might help explain circumstances contributing to my reactions.
The Tribunal declined to pursue the matter for that hearing. My follow-up question about causation received no substantive resolution that I could identify.
The subsequent strike-out ended the discrimination proceedings without a merits determination. Cepac obtained a substantial costs order, and I continued challenging the outcome through the appellate process.
I do not expect Page’s concealed correspondence to provide magical absolution for every offensive remark. Equally, I reject the assumption that behaviour can always be assessed fairly without considering the circumstances surrounding it.
That context becomes particularly important when disability and medically evidenced emotional dysregulation under stress form part of the record.
The question was never whether a claimant could behave however he pleased. It concerned whether the Tribunal had properly considered potentially relevant circumstances before ending an untried discrimination claim.
An absence of further correspondence is a remarkably unsatisfactory answer to such a consequential fucking question.
From Recruitment Complaint To Judicial Circus
This is the peculiar absurdity at the heart of The Cepac Files. The dispute began with a recruitment agency, an anticipated interview and disclosure of mental health difficulties. It developed into disagreement over knowledge, shortlisting and the organisations’ responses to my complaint.
Page’s records subsequently revealed internal discussions about the allegation and a search for my previous Tribunal proceedings. Some of the material remained redacted, leaving questions about the complete documentary context.
Rather than obtaining a conventional merits determination, the proceedings increasingly concentrated on my conduct. The respondents assembled a substantial case concerning correspondence, publications and social-media activity. Newcastle accepted that the conduct prevented a fair hearing and struck out the claims.
A £20,000 costs order followed. The original discrimination allegations remained untried.
Now Regional Employment Judge Sarah-Jane Davies has returned to the correspondence after the earlier redaction dispute. The first issue concerned evidence. Her name reappeared because of my language.
It is quite the magic show. The black boxes remain shut, the claimant’s conduct receives exhaustive attention and the regional judge resurfaces when somebody swears at the person who ended the case.
There is almost enough material for a theatrical production. Newcastle would presumably insist on redacting the script, striking out the lead actor and presenting the audience with a £20,000 fucking invoice for laughing at the wrong moment.
Welcome Back, Houdini
I don’t require Regional Employment Judge Davies to agree with my allegations. The Tribunal need not assume Page’s redactions concealed wrongdoing. Nor should disability automatically excuse every offensive remark directed towards the people involved.
What I expect is a coherent explanation of why potentially relevant evidence concerning an alleged wrong could not help explain conduct arising during the dispute. If the Tribunal properly considered the material and found it irrelevant, the reasoning should address that question.
Where the hearing’s narrower purpose prevented further examination, the institution could explain why that limitation excluded consideration of causation. Those are legitimate procedural issues, regardless of how unpleasantly the claimant later expressed his dissatisfaction.
Throughout these proceedings, legal and administrative bodies have devoted extraordinary attention to the way I express my grievances. Every insult can become an exhibit. Each publication offers another opportunity to assess my temperament, while the questions underlying those grievances sometimes receive remarkably narrow answers.
That is what makes Davies’s reappearance worth recording. Newcastle has demonstrated its ability to recognise offensive language, identify procedural rules and issue a response. Whether it adequately explained its earlier treatment of potentially relevant evidence remains a separate question.
The return of Houdini does not establish an elaborate judicial conspiracy. It illustrates how the same name can appear in different parts of a case while an earlier concern remains unresolved.
So welcome back, Regional Employment Judge Sarah-Jane Davies. I hope Newcastle’s administrative machinery has enjoyed a productive period of detecting offensive adjectives.
The black boxes are still here. The question is still here. And apparently, so are you.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- TCAP – Page Partners : Cepac Limited – Redactions, Panic Calls And The Disabled Candidate They Googled
- TCAP – Newcastle Employment Tribunal : Deep Dive – Deliberate Maladministration, Disability Shaming, Judicial White Knights, Speed-reader Smith And The Horsfield Menzies Feeding Frenzy
- TCAP – Page Partners : Serasa Experian II – The Credit File Comes Back Wrong
- Employment Appeal Tribunal – Frewer v Google UK Limited and Others [2022] EAT 34
- Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 – Rule 67
- Employment Tribunal Procedure Rules 2024 – Reconsideration and related procedures