Mrs S Fox v Hazel Grove High School — 2019

Mrs S Fox was employed by Hazel Grove High School as Director of Student Welfare from September 2016 and was on probation. The tribunal found that she did not have a structured induction and that she sought training on SIMS, behaviour management and middle leadership, but it held that those were requests for support rather than protected disclosures. It found that the only qualifying protected disclosure was her complaint to Mark Sibson on 4 October 2016 about inaccuracies in registers, which the tribunal accepted could tend to show a risk to pupils' health and safety.

The tribunal rejected the other pleaded disclosures, including alleged concerns about behaviour management, mobile phones, healthcare plans, the 9 November 2016 meeting with Paul Franklin, the email to the school nurse on 19 January 2017, the nicotine spray incident, and the alleged disclosure about Debi Lowe at the 30 January 2017 probation review. On the facts found, several of those matters were not raised as pleaded, and others did not amount to qualifying disclosures within section 43B. The tribunal also found that the probation review concerns, the 3 February 2017 letter, the prompt OH referral, and the later sickness absence correspondence were driven by genuine performance and absence-management concerns rather than the registers disclosure.

On the whistleblowing detriment complaints, the tribunal held that the grievance handling, the Walker investigation, the grievance outcome and appeal delay, the request for an independent investigation, the stage two sickness absence meeting in July 2017, the school's response to the Local Authority meeting on 25 July 2017, the redundancy consultation in August and September 2017, and the November 2017 reference were not materially influenced by the protected disclosure. Some steps were criticised as insensitive, incomplete, or not sufficiently rigorous, but the tribunal found that the relevant decision-makers were acting on performance, sickness absence, grievance-process, financial, or safeguarding considerations rather than on the registers disclosure.

The unfair dismissal claim under section 103A also failed. The tribunal accepted that the school was under financial pressure and that the arrest and prosecution of Debi Lowe in July 2017 led to a review of safeguarding arrangements. It found that the proposal to make the claimant's post redundant, the decision of Panel A on 15 September 2017, and the appeal outcome on 19 October 2017 were based on the merits of the redundancy and the school’s safeguarding and financial rationale, not on any protected disclosure. No monetary award was made.