Ms S Boylan v Hartlepool Borough Council — 2022

The claimant held separate Cleaner and Catering Assistant contracts with Hartlepool Borough Council. After returning to work in June 2020, she raised concerns about covid controls, PPE, cleaning standards and risk assessments at St Joseph's. The tribunal accepted that she made qualifying disclosures and that she reasonably believed the matters she raised were harmful or potentially harmful to health and safety and were in the public interest, although it found that some of her perceptions about the risk-assessment arrangements were mistaken.

The whistleblowing and health and safety detriment claims failed because the tribunal found that the later management action was driven by the claimant's conduct and the breakdown in relations at St Joseph's, not by the disclosures. It found that Ms Lilley asked the claimant to leave site on 20 July 2020 because the claimant had become argumentative after a confrontation with Ms Cotson, and that Mr Cuthbert later moved her away from St Joseph's for reasonable business reasons linked to the relationship breakdown and the need to preserve the cleaning service. The same causation finding was made for the January 2021 suspension, the February 2021 dismissals, and the appeal outcome.

On ordinary unfair dismissal, the tribunal held that the first dismissal from the Cleaner contract was fair because the respondent had a reasonable belief that the claimant had repeatedly refused reasonable management instructions to attend alternative sites, had carried out a reasonable investigation, and dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses. It accepted there had been a technical breach in conflating investigatory and disciplinary roles, but found no prejudice. By contrast, the first dismissal from the Catering Assistant contract was unfair because the issue was localised to St Joseph's, there were no performance problems in the catering role, and dismissal from that separate contract was outside the band of reasonable responses.

After the claimant's appeal, the Personnel Sub-Committee reinstated her to the Cleaner role at High Tunstall and the Catering Assistant role at Rossmere on the same terms and with back pay, but she declined to accept reinstatement and was later dismissed again with effect from 11 May 2021. The tribunal held those second dismissals were fair for the same conduct reasons. It declined an award for loss of statutory rights because the later fair dismissal would have removed those rights in any event. The only monetary award was the agreed basic award of £551.53 for the unfair first Catering Assistant dismissal; the tribunal found no compensatory loss because the claimant had been paid until the later dismissal and, in any event, had failed to mitigate loss.