Legal protection for trustees may be required to secure their right to freedom of expression.

United Kingdom Employment and HR

Legal protection for trustees may be required to secure their right to freedom of expression.

Protections for whistleblowers under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (ERA) are stated to apply only to workers and employees. Volunteers and trustees in the UK have not therefore been protected in law from retaliation because they have blown the whistle.

There have been cases which have considered the boundaries of the current legal protections. In our article from 2019: Could volunteers and trustees be protected as whistleblowers? we reported on the Supreme Court's judgment in Gilham v Ministry of Justice. The court in that case determined that denying a salaried district judge whistleblower protection was in breach of Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as it impinged on her right to freedom of expression on the ground of her status. For the purposes of whistleblowing protections only, this case extended the definition of a worker within the Employment Rights Act 1996 to judicial office holders.

On the question of the employment status of volunteers, our readers may also be interested in our recent article from June 2024: When does a volunteer have worker's rights? where a volunteer who had the right to payment for some of his volunteer duties was found to be a worker.

Article 14 ECHR protects people from discrimination in the way...

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