Lee Andrew Broadbent, registration number 2054269, was issued a six-month suspension by the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) for sending sexual messages to a colleague he was tutoring and touching her buttocks without her consent.
At hearings between July 20 and 23, the GPhC’s fitness-to-practise committee heard that between December 14, 2024 and January 4, 2025, Broadbent sent a number of messages to the trainee pharmacy advisor, referred to as colleague A, that were “unwanted” and “sexual in nature”.
According to the hearing document, Broadbent also “tapped or touched colleague A on her buttocks” while working at Boots.
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The committee acknowledged that Broadbent had admitted to “most of the allegations” at an “early stage”.
But it stressed that the matter “concerns serious sexual misconduct”.
“Sexualized” messages
The GPhC heard that both Broadbent and colleague A worked at Boots pharmacy in Hadfield, where Broadbent was a pharmacist and a tutor to colleague A.
The committee said that following a work Christmas party on December 14, 2024, Broadbent sent colleague A a WhatsApp text saying “he could not believe how good she looked that night”, as well as one remarking on “the size of her breasts”, before deleting the texts.
Broadbent went on to send colleague A further “sexualised” messages over the next three weeks, it added, including one describing “what he would do to her sexually” and one about him “touching himself whilst thinking about her”.
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The regulator heard that colleague A asked Broadbent to stop sending sexual messages on three or four occasions “because she did not like it”, and he would respond, “what’s the big deal?”.
And it said that on December 19, 2024, Broadbent “tapped” colleague A’s bottom “without her consent” while the two were “alone in the tea room”.
Colleague A “described the tap as a sexual touch” that she “might expect her partner to do” and “not something that she would expect from another person”.
She added that she “was in shock” and later “had a panic attack because of what had happened”.
Cooperative
The committee acknowledged that Broadbent had “cooperated fully” with the fitness-to-practise proceedings, as well as the Boots internal investigation, and had not been subject to any previous fitness-to-practise concerns.
It added that he has since worked “unrestricted and without incident” with employers aware of the allegations, demonstrating his “openness of the allegations with relevant people”.
And it said that testimonials from current colleagues “speak positively of a competent pharmacist”.
“Not a one-off event”
But the committee stressed that Broadbent’s behaviour “was not a single one-off event”, and “could have continued if colleague A did not choose to report” him, as indicated by his “refusal to stop sending sexualised messages even when asked to”.
It also noted that Broadbent’s misconduct “had an adverse impact upon colleague A”.
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The committee said members of the public “would be appalled to learn” of Broadbent’s misconduct, and noted that its effect “was to make colleague A feel unsafe in the workplace”.
But it found that removing Broadbent from the register would be “disproportionate”, as it is “in the public interest to keep a competent pharmacist within the industry who has shown he is willing and able to demonstrate insight and remediate his practice” but “requires more time and direction to do so”.
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The regulator concluded that a suspension of six months would be an “appropriate and proportionate” outcome.
This would “mark the seriousness of the misconduct” and provide enough time for Broadbent to “complete sufficient remediation and develop sufficient insight”, it said.
Read the determination in full here.
