Mrs N A Ball v Southport & Ormskirk NHS Trust — 2023

The tribunal upheld the claimant's protected disclosure detriment complaint in part. It found that Mrs N A Ball had made a protected disclosure orally to Ms Amanda Laughane and further protected disclosures by email on 16 and 19 April 2020. On that basis, it held that the respondent subjected her to detriments contrary to section 47B ERA 1996 when the Deputy Human Resources Director sent an email accusing her of behaving unpleasantly and aggressively towards managers, when the line manager deliberately failed to support her including by not asking whether she wanted an occupational health referral, and when the Deputy Human Resources Director accepted the account of Human Resources Business Partners uncritically and unquestioningly.

The remaining protected disclosure allegations were dismissed, and allegations D3.1.3.10, D3.1.3.11 and D3.1.3.16 were struck out because they were not actively pursued. The judgment therefore records a mixed result on the whistleblowing complaint, with only the specific detriments identified above found to have been done on the ground that the claimant had made protected disclosures.

The claimant succeeded in her unfair dismissal claim. The tribunal rejected any case under section 103A ERA 1996, finding that the sole or principal reason for dismissal was a breakdown in working relationships rather than the protected disclosures. It nevertheless held that the respondent acted unreasonably in treating that breakdown as sufficient reason to dismiss because it did not provide the claimant with the statements from colleagues on which the investigation report was based. The tribunal found that, had the respondent acted fairly, the claimant would inevitably have been dismissed by notice on or about 8 June 2021, so any compensatory award would need to reflect that finding.

The discrimination arising from disability claim was dismissed. Although the tribunal accepted that the claimant was treated unfavourably by dismissal partly because of emotional responses during the "SOSR" meeting, and by confirmation of dismissal on appeal partly because she did not accept an offer of redeployment, it found in each case that the treatment was a proportionate means of achieving the aim of restoring working relationships within the Human Resources Team. No monetary award is set out in the extracted reasons.