PR boss suffered breakdown after taking on 'troubled' tourism post

Published on Monday 14 September 2009 15:46

A PUBLIC relations expert suffered a mental collapse weeks after taking on a "troubled post" with a high profile tourism event, a tribunal heard today.

Richard Saville-Smith branded aspects of the set-up at Scotland's Year of Homecoming "inept" and said he found it "galling" to have his professional advice ignored by managers.

The 48-year-old told how he issued a "cry for help" prior to his breakdown after finding his workload excessive, but ended up in hospital around two months after taking on the job.

Mr Saville-Smith, who was appointed PR manager of Homecoming Scotland 2009, is taking national tourism agency VisitScotland to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh.

The alleges he was unfairly discriminated against under disability legislation, claiming the style of management in place, his workload and a lack of resources caused him to suffer a bipolar episode after 13 years of good health.

Mr Saville-Smith, from Edinburgh, says he was later dismissed from his job and received his P45 on Christmas Eve last year.

He told the first day of the tribunal that he had a long track record in his field, which included being the PR brain behind the 2005 Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh and the Tsunami Appeal in the same year – Scotland's biggest ever fundraising event.

He told how he was appointed as PR manager for Homecoming Scotland 2009 last June, and was in charge of a 250,000 budget.

He said a PR manager had not been appointed straight away in November 2007 when EventScotland – a wing of VisitScotland – took over the Homecoming project, and he explained that it had been a part-time role until April 2008.

Mr Saville-Smith said Homecoming Scotland had a "troubled history" and he told the tribunal his predecessor had resigned shortly after she went full-time. He said she told him: "I cannot stand another year of this."

He told the panel today: "This post that I was recruited into was a troubled post, where the previous incumbent had just resigned pretty much just as soon as she became full time, where the previous incumbent had never been more than part-time during all the crucial planning stages."

He went on: "Not appointing a full-time PR manager in a campaign that had to be led from the front on a PR global basis must seem inept in my view."

He told the tribunal he had a number of projects on his plate in his early weeks at Homecoming Scotland, including planning launches in London and New York, a global poetry competition, and a major event at the Edinburgh Festival, as well as working on his own plans for a global charity fundraising Burns Supper campaign.

Mr Saville-Smith told how he was looking after the PR for hundreds of events and submitted a plan to managers, arguing that he needed more help and resources. "This was my cry for help," he said.

He also told how he advised "in the strongest possible terms" against using the song Caledonia in a TV advert for Homecoming, instead of a more internationally recognised song, but had his warnings ignored.

He said: "They brought me in to provide expert PR advice. To simply then just ignore it and then for my PR advice to be proved correct down the line is galling."

The PR guru told the tribunal that by the weekend of August 16/17 last year, he "became ill very rapidly" and ended up in New Craigs Hospital in Inverness.

The panel later heard about a series of communications between Mr Saville-Smith and VisitScotland officials surrounding his return to his 40,000-a-year post and the "reasonable adjustments" to be made.

The PR boss alleges that despite being signed back on as fit to work in September last year, and a subsequent psychiatrist's report confirming his fitness, he was ostracised, kept away from work for nine weeks and then sacked.

He told the tribunal today it was suggested in one such communication that his return to the project could have an adverse effect on other people on the team.

"I believe this is discrimination of the highest and clearest kind," he told the panel.

Mr Saville-Smith earlier told the hearing that he had wanted to get back to work in a way which was "sustainable". And he insisted he had a "very good relationship" with many members of the Homecoming team.

"There wasn't a fraught, broken, cracked office environment," he said.

"We were united by our ambition and vision for Homecoming."

But he labelled as "lacklustre" the eventual Homecoming campaign, which is aimed at getting Scots around the world back to the country.

The hearing, which is expected to run for another three days, continues tomorrow.