Ms G Abou-Ameira v Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust and 2 others — 2025

The claimant, a consultant paediatric dentist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, alleged a long series of detriments for making protected disclosures about workload, staffing, clinic overbooking, supervision, patient safety and related matters. The tribunal dismissed the complaints in full. It found the claimant to be an unreliable witness in material respects, and it did not accept her handwritten meeting notes as contemporaneous or reliable records.

The tribunal accepted that concerns about the claimant's conduct had been raised years before the alleged protected disclosures, including complaints from junior colleagues and a 2018 investigation that, although it did not uphold the specific bullying allegations then made, identified wider concerns about communication and feedback style. It found that the informal standard-setting process agreed in May 2022 was driven by those pre-existing conduct concerns and was decided before any protected disclosure relied on in the claim.

For the alleged disclosures in June, July and August 2022, the tribunal repeatedly found that the claimant either did not make the disclosure said to have been made, or that what she said was too general, too vague, or made in her own self-interest to satisfy section 43B(1)(d) ERA 1996 and the public interest requirement. In relation to the WLI payments, the tribunal found that the claimant's complaints were driven by the decision to reduce payments and her own working arrangements. It found that the 19 July 2022 meeting did involve patient-safety concerns about the service, but that the discussion was primarily about the claimant's job plan and working pattern and was not made in the public interest, and no detriment was proved to have followed.

The tribunal found that the 4 November 2022 consultant meeting did amount to a protected disclosure because clinic overbooking and trainee complaints were discussed and the claimant said the situation was unsafe, but it found no detriment arising from that meeting. It also found that later complaints on 1 and 2 December 2022 and on 12 January 2023 were not proved as protected disclosures, either because the wording was not specific enough, because the claimant did not use the language she alleged, or because the communications were directed to her own position once MHPS proceedings had begun. The Datix report and the IT access restriction were found to be reasonable management steps, and the reduction of sick pay followed the consultants' terms and conditions.

On the later whistleblowing complaint, the tribunal accepted the letters of 19 April 2023 and 22 May 2023, and the ET1 of 30 June 2023, as protected disclosures. It nevertheless found that the appointment of an external investigator, the continuation of the FTSU process, the decision to proceed to a formal conduct hearing, the handling of NHSR/PPA correspondence, and the complaint about delay or process were not retaliatory acts done because of protected disclosures. The tribunal held that the respondents were responding to repeated conduct concerns and that the investigation and hearing decisions were reasonable on the evidence before them. Accordingly, all claims were dismissed.