MS LING (COUNSEL) FOR THE v Respondent — 2025

Mark Jones, a serving North Wales Police officer and elected Branch Secretary of the Police Federation of England and Wales, was suspended on 24 January 2024 following an anonymised complaint, removed from all positions on 29 April 2024, and his appeal was rejected on 17 May 2024. He brought complaints of unfair dismissal and detriment for making protected disclosures. This reserved judgment, following a preliminary hearing on 21 and 22 May 2025, decided whether he was an employee, worker, or otherwise entitled to whistleblowing protection in respect of the Branch Secretary role.

The tribunal held that there was no express or implied contract between the claimant and the respondent when he became Branch Secretary. It treated the Appendix 8 Performance and Standards Agreement and the Appendix 9 Ethics, Standards and Performance Procedure as setting expectations and a complaints process, not contractual terms. The wider statutory and factual context pointed away from contract: the respondent is a statutory body governed by the Police Act 1996 and the 2017 Regulations, the claimant was elected through the branch structures, remained paid by North Wales Police, and the monthly ARP of £246.46 was treated as a reformed honorarium rather than consideration for a contract. The claimant was therefore not an employee or limb (b) worker of the respondent, and he could not rely on section 43K ERA 1996.

For the whistleblowing complaint, the tribunal applied Article 14 read with Article 10 ECHR, referring to Gilham and MacLennan and to the Michalak questions. It accepted that, as Branch Secretary, the claimant was in a relevantly analogous position to a limb (b) worker: he held a full-time office with responsibilities, was likely to become aware of wrongdoing, and faced vulnerability to retaliation. The respondent did not identify a legitimate aim for excluding someone in that position from Part IVA protection. The tribunal therefore held that the claimant's exclusion from whistleblowing protection breached Article 14 with Article 10, and that the Employment Rights Act 1996 should be read and given effect so as to extend section 47B protection to him while he held the office of Branch Secretary, permitting the detriment complaint to proceed.