Worcester hospital bosses have been slammed in a damning report by an employment judge after wrongly sacking two NHS scientists.

Rose Hill, aged 62, and Allison Weston, 54, were unfairly dismissed from jobs at Worcestershire Royal Hospital following allegations they accessed the confidential medical records of a colleague, an employment tribunal has decided.

The employment judge said the disciplinary process was “shot through with bias and error”, and there were no reasonable grounds to believe either woman was guilty. Mrs Hill had worked for the trust for more than 40 years and both women had an “unblemished record”.

The report said Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust committed poor HR practice, breached its own policy, its appeal hearing was plainly inadequate and the decision to sack the women was not one a reasonable employer could have imposed.

The dismissals were unfair, not because of a technical point of procedure, but because of fundamental failures to understand or apply the requirements of fairness.

The tribunal said it hoped the judgement would be read by the board of directors because senior management had failed to appreciate the difficulty of the task faced by more junior officers investigating the case who found themselves out of their depth.

The women, who were scientists in the department of histopathology and cytopathology, were dismissed for gross misconduct in 2010. They both denied the allegation made against them, that they accessed the woman’s medical files, including a pregnancy test, on separate days. The woman who complained, a trainee scientist, did not report her concerns until eight months later.

The tribunal found that her evidence had to be treated with great caution. It was possible the woman had accessed her own results using Mrs Hill’s computer.

Mrs Hill reported that her office had been broken into and ransacked and files strewn across the floor in June 2009.

Penny Venables, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “The outcome of the tribunal has highlighted a number of issues for the trust to consider – many of which are already being addressed by the new executive team.

“However, we will continue to take seriously any potential breach of confidentiality as patients and staff must have confidence that their personal data is safe and only used in appropriate circumstances.”