Lecturer kept images of Helen Flanagan in work cabinet

John Taylor insisted the images of Helen Flanagan were not pornographic

A college lecturer has been reprimanded after keeping glamour images of actress Helen Flanagan in his filing cabinet.

John Taylor, 54, was sacked from Grwp Llandrillo Menai College in 2019 for gross misconduct for which he later claimed unfair dismissal.

He was also found to have made sexual innuendos over a student's name.

An Education Workforce Council hearing imposed a two-year reprimand but has allowed the English & media lecturer to continue to work in education.

Mr Taylor had worked at the college's sites in Rhyl, Denbighshire, and Rhos-on-Sea, Conwy, for 23 years before he was sacked in April 2019 for allegedly staring at students' breasts and bottoms.

He successfully claimed unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal after the college's investigation was found to be flawed.

However a fitness to practise hearing found five of seven allegations of misconduct against him were proven.

He was found to have repeatedly emphasised part of a female student's surname because of the sexual innuendo.

'Humiliated'

He claimed he merely thought the name funny, but the committee described his behaviour as "infantile and unprofessional" which made the 16-year-old feel humiliated and uncomfortable.

Following his dismissal, CDs, DVDs and sexually provocative pictures of actress Helen Flanagan and singer Ai Shinozaki were discovered in his locked filing cabinet.

The lecturer worked at the college's site in Rhyl, as well as in Rhos-on-Sea

While Mr Taylor accepted it had been a mistake to take them to work, he said: "None of the images were nude or in any way pornographic, and all were of a similar nature to those which might appear in newspapers, Mail Online, or celebrity magazines."

The committee said the images were "inappropriate for a learning environment" but accepted they could not be accessed by anyone else and it was not unacceptable professional conduct.

'Foolish'

In imposing a reprimand, the committee said that as an experienced professional Mr Taylor, who had a previously clean record, should have known better.

However it added: "Mr Taylor's actions were foolish, unprofessional and ill-judged. In those circumstances, on balance, the committee did not consider his conduct was fundamentally incompatible with him remaining in education."

Mr Taylor said: "It is clear to me that I got a number of things wrong in my interactions with students towards the end of my employment at the college."