A BINMAN has lost his claim for “unfair dismissal” from the job he carried out for 38 years.

Employment tribunal chairman Michael Zuke ruled that Brighton and Hove City Council took the “reasonable response of a responsible employer” when they dismissed Des Jones after allegations of homophobic comments towards a colleague.

The two-day hearing is expected to cost taxpayers thousands of pounds after the judge declined to award costs to the city council.

The 65-year-old was issued a final written warning in 2011 after claims that he scrawled homophobic comments on an LGBT poster at work. Yesterday Mr Jones told the London South Employment Tribunal in Croydon there was no truth to his Cityclean colleague’s claims that he made homophobic comments during a round they worked on in October 2012.

The former merchant seaman denied changing the words of a sea shanty to make a homophobic joke about a poop deck.

He said: “I survived a fire on a ship and I might have said that the emergency steering gear was situated on the poop deck. I didn’t put that into a sea shanty.”

Mr Jones claimed the employee who made the complaint, named as ‘TW’, also used offensive language.

He said: “Mr TW is a person who uses colourful language all the time. He uses more colourfullanguage than I do.”

He added: “I have worked with people who are homosexual and got on with them, worked with black people and got on fine.”

Lauren Godfrey for the council said it was not unfair on Mr Jones that his accuser TW was not cross examined because TW was a “reluctant complainant”.

Mr Godrey had applied for the council’s costs to be met by Mr Jones because the 65-year-old from Hollingdean continued with his “misconceived” claim despite “no reasonable prospect of success”.

Mr Jones said after the hearing that he would continue to fight to clear his name.

Sue Moorman, for the city council, was pleased that the tribunal upheld its action.