Paul Browning

Introduction

Paul Browning taught art, specialising in graphic design, at Solihull Sixth Form College for twenty-three years before West Midlands Police arrested him in September 2019 for secretly recording a woman showering in his own home. He admitted the offence, resigned from the college days after his arrest, then tried to take the resignation back — the college refused — and in November 2020 was convicted of voyeurism and given a suspended prison sentence. He admitted the regulatory allegation, and on 22 June 2022 decision maker Sarah Buxcey banned him from teaching for life, with no review period and no right ever to apply for restoration.

Background Information

Browning joined Solihull Sixth Form College on 1 September 1996 as a teacher of art. His employment record already carried management concerns: a July 2015 investigation meeting over inappropriate behaviour and comments during teaching sessions and substandard assessment feedback, and a November 2015 informal meeting after a parent complaint about coursework confidentiality, time management and feedback quality. On 25 September 2019 he was arrested by West Midlands Police. In police statements he admitted recording a female while she showered in his house, and police confirmed he was being investigated for voyeurism, conducting three interviews between September 2019 and January 2020. The college, told of his arrest and custody, suspended him immediately; he resigned on 30 September 2019. On 4 October 2019 he emailed asking to withdraw the resignation; the college declined, confirmed his last day as 30 September, and after statements from two people on 7 October held investigatory meetings in late October and a disciplinary hearing on 6 February 2020. It concluded he had committed gross misconduct — that he had brought the college and trust into disrepute and that there were serious child protection issues — and terminated his employment with immediate effect. On 13 November 2020 he was convicted at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted of voyeurism — recording a woman doing a private act without consent — for filming her showering in his home; 26-week suspended sentence and seven-year registration; banned for life with no review and no restoration.

The conviction, for conduct between January 2015 and December 2017, was under section 67(3) and (5) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003: recording another person doing a private act, for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, knowing she did not consent. The certificate of conviction from Birmingham and Solihull Magistrates’ Court recorded the sentence: 26 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for 24 months, a mental health treatment requirement, a rehabilitation activity requirement, £500 compensation to the victim, a £128 victim surcharge, £185 in prosecution costs, and seven years on the sex offender register from the date of conviction. Browning admitted the facts in his response to the notice of proceedings dated 21 October 2021 and in a statement of agreed facts signed on 25 November 2021, and the case was decided without a hearing. The panel treated the conviction as conclusive proof, found no exceptional circumstances, and held that the behaviour — though committed at home, away from the college and involving no pupil or colleague — touched his profession directly through its bearing on public confidence and safeguarding. It noted the suspended custody itself marked the seriousness of the offending, and that voyeurism is an offence the regulator’s Advice flags as likely to be a relevant offence.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel weighed his mitigation — emotional difficulties he described from the relevant period, stemming from circumstances the decision redacts — against the gravity of the conviction and found the latter decisive for his ongoing suitability to teach. It identified the Advice’s incompatibility factors as engaged: serious departure from the Teachers’ Standards, the commission of a serious criminal offence, sexual misconduct, a deep-seated attitude leading to harmful behaviour, and dishonesty or lack of integrity including concealment of actions. The public interest factors — safeguarding of pupils, maintenance of public confidence, declaring proper standards — were found strongly present. The panel recommended prohibition without any review period, and Buxcey went further in structure: not only no review, but no entitlement to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach, the severest form the order takes. The college’s own process had already concluded with gross-misconduct dismissal in February 2020, months before the criminal court sentenced him.

Current Status

Browning is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England, and the order carries no provision for review or restoration — there is no date, however distant, on which he may ask for it back. The criminal sentence’s operative period ran from November 2020: the 24-month suspension of the 26-week custodial term, the mental health treatment and rehabilitation requirements, and the seven-year notification duty, which expires in November 2027. His teaching career, begun in 1996, ended with his resignation on 30 September 2019; his attempt to withdraw it failed, and the disciplinary dismissal followed in February 2020. The lifetime ban forecloses any return to child-facing work in English schools regardless of what happens with the criminal sentence’s completion.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Twenty-three years of classroom service ended not through anything that happened at the college but through a camera in his own bathroom: the case shows how the regulator treats a sexual offence against an adult committed at home as career-ending for a teacher, on public-confidence and safeguarding grounds alone. The chronology is a lesson in finality — Browning resigned the week of his arrest, then tried to reverse it; the college refused, held its hearing anyway, and dismissed him for gross misconduct with child-protection findings, so that by the time he was sentenced he had already been out of the classroom for fourteen months. The no-review, no-restoration structure places him in the category of teachers whose conduct the Secretary of State deems incompatible with any future return, however rehabilitated. For the profession, the decision reaffirms that voyeurism sits in the Advice’s highest-risk band of relevant offences, and that a sexual offence conviction carries a lifetime bar even when custody itself is suspended.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Paul Browning” — source