Chef awarded £20,000 after boss threatened to have him deported
13 June 2025, 10:54 | Updated: 13 June 2025, 10:57
A chef at a gastropub in Berkshire will be given £20,000 in damages after a restaurateur threatened to "call the Home Office" and send him "back" to Mexico.
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Francis Rockcliff, owner of the Pot Kiln gastropub in Thatcham, Berkshire, has been ordered to pay more than £20,000 in damages in the outcome of an employment tribunal.
Rockcliff, 73, was found to have launched a social media tirade against people who worked in high-end restaurants.
His comments were said to be prompted by the walk-out of the pub's head chef, Cesar Omar Perez Vargas, who led the workplace after claiming he had been given an "unreasonable" number of orders.
This led to a "heated" row between Vargas and Rockcliff, seeing Rockcliff allegedly threaten to "send" Perez Vargas "back to the country" he "belongs".
Perez Vargas then went on to quit the gastropub and sue the venue.
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During the legal proceedings, the tribunal was told that the gastropub’s owner threatened to report Perez Vargas to the Home Office after saying that “Mexicans were not reliable”.
Rockcliff was also alleged to have said that he would tell officials that the chef, who had a husband, had sexually harassed male staff.
Rockcliff said his social media post had not been “directed” at the chef specifically, but the tribunal in Reading ruled that anyone who was aware of the issues between the pair would consider that the comment referred to Perez Vargas.
The judge upheld Perez Vargas’s complaints of unfair dismissal and race and sexual orientation harassment and awarded him more than £20,400 in compensation.
The chef had worked at the gastro pub since 2019, but its kitchen staff was halved from four to two in 2022, placing an "extra burden" on those remaining.
This came to a head on a Sunday in August, as Perez Vargas was expected to prepare food for 60 people and older the owner he could not "bear the pressure anymore".
This led to the two arguing on the street outside, with Rockcliff allegedly saying: “I knew that you Mexicans were not reliable people. I will call the Home Office and make sure that they send you back to the country that you belong. I will also tell them that you have been sexually harassing all the male staff.”
Rockcliff denied having made the comments and emphatically denied being racist.
