THE deputy head of a large comprehensive was forced to sit in a chair that made rude noises every time she moved, an employment tribunal was told yesterday.

Sue Storer, 48, claims that her requests for a new chair were repeatedly ignored and that she was “victimised, harassed and bullied” because she was a woman.

Mrs Storer told the tribunal that her two joint deputy heads, who were both men, were given new “executive” chairs without having to ask, whereas she continually had to apologise to pupils, parents and other teachers for the noises.

She resigned from her £48,000-a-year post at Bedminster Down Secondary School in Bristol and is claiming more than £1 million, based on lost earnings and loss of pension, against Bristol City Council for constructive dismissal and sex discrimination.

Mrs Storer, who had been an art teacher for 26 years, says that she was subjected to four years of overwork, intimidation and stress after joining the 1,000-pupil school in April 2001. She said that her “farting chair” was a regular joke.

She said: “It was very embarrassing to sit on. I asked for a chair that didn’t give me a dead leg or make these very embarrassing farting sounds. It was a regular joke that my chair would make these farting sounds and I regularly had to apologise that it wasn’t me, it was my chair.”

She said that when a consignment of new chairs arrived in May 2002 she was not allocated one. She said: “I had specially requested a chair under health and safety regulations and I didn’t get one.”

She was appointed because of her specialist vocational training knowledge after an Ofsted report recommended more work-related teaching at the school. She claims that Marius Frank, the head teacher, favoured her two male colleagues and piled extra work on her to spare them.

She said that her aspirations to be a head teacher were dashed when Mr Frank insisted that she invigilate an art exam instead of attending the final session of a training course.

Mrs Storer, a divorced mother of two, said that Mr Frank had shown her a list of complaints about her management from other members of staff, but refused to identify who had said what. As a result, she said, she suffered a nervous breakdown and developed severe clinical depression. She said: “Basically I wanted to commit suicide and I thought about crashing my car.”

Asked why she did not sort out the problem, she told the tribunal: “It’s a health and safety issue for an employer to ensure you have a comfortable chair.”

Mrs Storer, of Pensford, Somerset, said that she had raised the issue with the health and safety co-ordinator, Dick Hibdidge, a fellow deputy head. She said: “After 12 months of not receiving a chair, I put in a memo and still didn’t receive one.”

Dave Rossiter, Mrs Storer’s legal representative, who is also her partner, said: “Mrs Storer has been mercilessly victimised, harassed and bullied.”

Later Richard Bevan, the chairman of the school governors, said that although money was tight the budget could have stretched to a new chair. “I just can’t understand why that issue wouldn’t have been resolved. I would have thought that anybody in a senior position could have sorted out that problem,” he said.

Mr Frank said that he would have expected a member of the school’s leadership team to have had the “wit and initiative” to sort the problem out. The head teacher said that one delivery of chairs sat in reception for two weeks. “If it was an issue, I would have expected her to help herself.”

The tribunal continues.

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