Mr J England (counsel) For the v Respondent — 2017

The claimant, a Police Constable on the British Transport Police Authority's ERU team, brought a whistleblowing detriment claim under s.47B ERA 1996. The tribunal identified seven alleged protected disclosures and sixteen alleged detriments, but the claim ultimately failed on liability. It held that only two limited matters were protected disclosures: the 25 April 2016 email to PS Johnson insofar as it complained about Johnson changing shifts on 125 occasions, and the 19 May 2017 complaint about PS Bute working back-to-back 12-hour shifts. Other statements were either speculative, lacked sufficient factual content, were not reasonably believed to show wrongdoing, or did not meet the public interest test.

The tribunal rejected the claimant's broader fraud allegations about PS Johnson's overtime and shift arrangements, including the 18 December 2015 duty and the later failure-to-stop allegation. It found that the claimant did not have a reasonable basis for saying those matters tended to show fraud or other breaches of legal obligation. Later disclosures mostly repeated the same limited protected points and, by the time of the grievance process, the tribunal held that most of the earlier matters were no longer protected at all.

None of the alleged detriments succeeded. The tribunal found that the PDR comment the claimant complained about was trivial, not disadvantageous, and in any event was not included because of the protected element of the April 2016 email. It found that PS Johnson's August 2017 emails about study time were reasonable and accommodating, not detriments. It also found that the 7 September 2017 Written Record of Meeting, the 28 September 2017 Management Action File Note, the removal from driving duties, and the transfer from the ERU to the Crime Action Team were all driven by the claimant's conduct, the breakdown in the working relationship, and management's view that he had become unmanageable, not by any protected disclosure.

The tribunal likewise rejected the grievance-stage complaints. It held that the Stage 1 grievance investigation was properly carried out overall, that the inclusion of some findings in the report was at most a technical policy issue, and that the Stage 2 and Stage 3 outcomes were based on the investigators' and appeal officer's independent assessments rather than retaliation for whistleblowing. It accepted that some process choices were imperfect, including the handling of the driving suspension and the move to a different role, but found those matters were not materially caused by the protected disclosures. The tribunal also rejected the claimant's reliance on the Jhuti principle, finding no dishonest invention or manipulation of the decision-making process by the managers involved.

On limitation, the tribunal said the earlier detriment complaints were prima facie out of time, but did not need finally to decide time point because the claim failed on liability. It added that, even if time point mattered, it would have been reasonably practicable for the claimant to have brought the claim earlier, given his access to Federation advice and the fact that he had already consulted about the issues long before issuing proceedings.