Whistleblowing claims continued to grab the headlines last year across every sector of industry from–claims about Facebook’s use of data to allegations made about the UK’s evacuation from Afghanistan. Indeed, at the time of publishing this article, Number 10 Downing Street is engaged in a number of issues which could lead to whistleblowing claims of various shapes and sizes.

In December 2021, there were press reports about the resignation of the Chair of an NHS Foundation Trust following the publication of a review earlier that month into the Trust’s actions following an anonymous letter sent in October 2018 to a relative of a patient who had died. The Trust had focussed on the mission to ‘find the whistle blower’ (including requesting fingerprint samples from staff), rather than on whether something had gone wrong with patient care and, if so, how the organisation could learn from it.

Injury to feelings awards

In 2021, we saw injury to feelings compensation of 20,000 awarded to a whistleblower in the case of Appleby v Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. In this case, the Claimant was employed as part of the Trust’s central Safeguarding team. She made disclosures concerning the reporting of safeguarding issues and the Trust did not dispute that these amounted to protected disclosures. The issue was whether the Claimant had been subjected to detriments as a result. The detriments alleged were grouped into two categories by the Tribunal. The first largely related to...

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