Sherylgate: the latest

An employment tribunal on Tuesday adjourned the hearing of chief executive Sheryl Grady's allegations of sex discrimination against Worthing Borough Council and its former leader and Lib Dem councillor Sheila Player.

Miss Player has denied the allegations and said she would fight them "vigorously".

The Brighton hearing has been adjourned until the autumn, and the two sides have been ordered by tribunal chairman Ian Soulsby to tell him by the end of this month whether they have reached a settlement.

If agreement has not been reached by then, the hearing will resume on Wednesday, September 8, with eight days being set aside for it.

One surprise that emerged when the tribunal opened on Monday was that although the hearing has for weeks been scheduled to last for five days, Mr Soulsby was available for only three days.

And what was not generally known until Tuesday was that last Wednesday Miss Grady was suspended from her chief executive's post after having been on extended sick leave since last December 29. The suspension was made in connection with an on-going disciplinary procedure against Miss Grady.

It means that Miss Grady, who earns 100,000 a year including special duty payments, will continue on full pay during her suspension. If she had not been suspended, then her pay packet would have been cut by half to coincide with the completion of six months' sick leave.

Comments made by the legal representatives of both sides indicated that they were both willing to see a settlement in the sex discrimination case.

But despite last-minute talks extending right up to the tribunal opening on Monday, a solution could not be agreed... and the main factor seems to be the change of Worthing Council's administration as a result of last Thursday's local elections.

Keith Mercer, leader of the victorious Tory group who snatched control of the council from the Lib Dems, told the Herald after Tuesday's tribunal adjournment: "It is required that a full council meeting, whether special or a normal one, has to be held so that it can confirm or deny any settlement proposed.

"The next scheduled council meeting is the annual meeting on June 25 and we will have to consider with officers whether that is the proper forum."

Miss Player has denied any involvement in last week's decision to suspend Miss Grady, an action which was taken the day before the local elections which proved such a disaster for the town's Lib Dems.

The Herald believes the suspension was ordered by the cross-party special personnel committee which is investigating allegations of bullying made against Miss Grady by two council employees, but no one was available at the Town Hall to confirm this.

Miss Grady has claimed her stress-related sick leave is due to the way the council has conducted this internal inquiry. It emerged at Tuesday's tribunal hearing that some evidence being put before it was connected with the disciplinary inquiry, and Mr Soulsby said that this evidence could be relevant if the tribunal was reconvened in September.

The council's legal team queried with the tribunal panel whether Miss Player could, as a (then) councillor, be named as a respondent in the action.

Mr Soulsby said the panel would take an awful lot of persuasion to regard Miss Player as an "employer".

But they felt that as council leader at the time, Miss Player was carrying out an executive role and was not just a "back bencher".