Andrew Wix v Sole Bay Fish Company Limited and 1 other — 2025

The tribunal found that the claimant started work on 20 September 2021 and was not given a written statement of initial particulars or a contract at the start of employment. It rejected the respondents’ position that an October 2022 unsigned contract was the initial contract, and found instead that no offer letter or contract was provided in 2021 or during the first two months of employment. It also found that from May 2022 the claimant was operating as Operations Manager, following the parties’ discussions about his title and appraisal materials.

On the whistleblowing issues, the tribunal held that the claimant’s 22 March 2023 email about licensing matters was a qualifying disclosure, and that the discussion in the week commencing 22 May 2023 about Kitchen 1 and the EHO report was also a qualifying disclosure. It found that the 18 May conversation alleged about environmental health did not happen as claimed, and that the 12 June email and the solicitors’ letters of 16 and 22 June 2023 were not new disclosures but later communications summarising earlier concerns. Applying the statutory test under s.43B ERA 1996, the tribunal concluded that the claimant’s licensing and food-safety concerns were in the public interest, but most of the alleged detriments were not made out on the facts.

The tribunal rejected the alleged detriments either because the event did not occur as alleged, did not amount to a detriment, or was not shown to have been done on the ground of the protected disclosures. It found, for example, that there was no instruction to stock alcohol contrary to the claimant’s directions, no agreed kitchen plan that could have been amended, no breach of confidentiality in circulating the 22 June letter within the business, and no unlawful instruction to colleagues not to speak with the claimant. It also found that the gross-misconduct allegation arose later, following Peninsula advice and after the claimant’s resignation, rather than because of the protected disclosures.

The automatic unfair dismissal complaint was dismissed because the tribunal found the claimant resigned after the relationship had broken down in the context of a power struggle over how the business was run, not because of the protected disclosures. It concluded that the claimant’s resignation was not caused by the March email or the May kitchen discussion. The separate holiday pay complaint had already been withdrawn, and although the s.1 ERA 1996 claim succeeded, the tribunal recorded that no award could be made because the claimant had not succeeded in the other claims before it.