A hearing over unfair dismissal claims by a former litter enforcement officer who said he was told to target ethnic minorities with fines has been vacated after the allegations were dismissed.

Gary Forrester, 39, previously told an employment tribunal that staff at Kingdom Services Group were under “daily threat” of being fired if they did not issue enough fixed penalty notices (FPNs) and were told to go after minorities because they were less inclined to query them or to understand UK law.

A remedy hearing scheduled for Friday was vacated after Mr Forrester’s claim that he was wrongly dismissed for blowing the whistle about the alleged activities was dismissed.

The tribunal also dismissed his other allegations, of unfair dismissal and racial discrimination.

Mr Forrester, of Bromley, worked for Kingdom from February to November 2020 and was usually based in the London Borough of Barnet.

John Roberts, the head of local authority support at Kingdom, previously told the East London Employment Tribunal that the allegations made by Mr Forrester “did not fit the business model” as “people need to know why they are being stopped”.

Mr Roberts said his company runs a “transparent system” and it does not “stack up” that staff were told to hand out FPNs to people from ethnic minorities, as they needed to understand what was happening so payments of fines would go through.

Have you got a story for us? You can contact us here.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to keep up with all the latest news.

Sign up to our newsletters to get updates sent straight to your inbox.