Mr K Kinnear v Panorama Furnishings Mart Ltd — 2021

The claimant brought an application for interim relief in connection with a claim that he was automatically unfairly dismissed for making a protected disclosure. He said the disclosure was made on 13 January 2021 to the Environmental Health office of Liverpool City Council and concerned COVID-19 safety issues, including positive tests at the workplace and alleged failures to require masks, distancing, PPE, hand sanitiser, and self-isolation. The tribunal accepted for the purposes of the application that a local authority environmental health department could potentially be a prescribed person under s.43F ERA 1996.

The respondent said the dismissal on 22 January 2021 was for redundancy as part of a restructure, and that the decision to dismiss the claimant had already been discussed and taken in early January 2021, before the disclosure. It relied on witness evidence from Diane Wells and Roy Rotheram, including a 7 January 2021 to-do list referring to recruiting another driver to replace the claimant. The tribunal also noted evidence that there had been earlier environmental health contact about the respondent in early January, which meant the claimant was not the only possible source of the later complaint.

Applying the interim-relief test discussed in Ministry of Justice v Sarfraz and Taplin v C Shippam Ltd, the tribunal held that the claimant had not shown a "pretty good chance" of succeeding at the final hearing. It found the evidence that the respondent knew he had made the protected disclosure was far from compelling, said the claimant's 20 January 2021 email did not clearly reveal whistleblowing, and accepted that other non-whistleblowing explanations for dismissal were plausible. The tribunal refused the application for interim relief.