Miss N Fofanah v Hearts First Ambulance Ltd and 1 other — 2023

This was a whistleblowing detriment case about Miss N Fofanah's deployment at the East Midlands Airport covid testing site. She alleged six oral protected disclosures in December 2020 and January to February 2021 concerning the condition and running of the site, including waste disposal, toilets, heating, cleaning, patient privacy and ID-checking, and said her placement ended because she had raised those concerns.

The tribunal found that the site had been set up urgently and that staff were generally asked for their views on how the service should run. It accepted that some of the subjects relied on by the claimant were the subject of general discussion, but it did not find that she made the specific disclosures alleged, or that she identified with sufficient particularity what she said, to whom, and when. The tribunal also relied on inconsistencies between the pleaded case and oral evidence, the absence of the alleged journal, and the lack of any contemporaneous reference to disclosures in the claimant's early correspondence.

The tribunal found that the removal from the roster arose after a dispute on 28 February 2021 about recording breaks and Ms McKeever's resulting request that the claimant not be sent back to site. Mr Spicer authorised that instruction and the first respondent then stopped offering the claimant work at the EMA site. The tribunal held that the relevant decision-makers did not know of any protected disclosure, and that the reason for the detriment was the events of 28 February 2021 and the concerns about the claimant's timekeeping and conduct. Applying s.47B and s.48(2) ERA 1996, and referring to Fecitt, Jhuti and Malik, the tribunal dismissed both claims.