A nurse sacked after speaking out about a patient’s death has won a record 460,000 payout after an employment tribunal found there was ‘close proximity’ between her launching a whistleblowing process and the trust’s decision to dismiss her for gross misconduct.

There are several dos and don’ts when an employee requests to instigate a formal whistleblowing process – and suspending them without merit should never happen.

For a qualifying disclosure to be protected, the worker must make it by a permitted method, which includes disclosure to the employer. The worker must also have a reasonable belief that the disclosure is in the public interest; a requirement that is commonly misunderstood with claimant’s raising their own personal grievances under the guise of a whistleblowing claim.

But in this recent high-profile case, the employer, North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust, was found to have breached the legal protection this should afford under whistleblowing law which is located in the Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998).

The trust appeared to use suspension, and eventual dismissal, to hush the serious concerns raised by Linda Fairhall around patient care. These centred on the impact of increased workloads, matters alleging that the health or safety of patients and staff was, or was likely to be, put at risk, and employee stress and sickness.

With most recent stats indicating that whistleblowing concerns are on the increase, up...

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