Mr P Sarkar v Advice Direct Scotland Ltd — 2026

This was an open preliminary hearing on whether Mr Sarkar had made protected disclosures within sections 43A to 43L of the Employment Rights Act 1996. He alleged detriments under section 47B and automatic unfair dismissal under section 103A arising from emails, Microsoft Teams messages and conversations on 14 and 15 January 2025. The tribunal noted that his service with Advice Direct Scotland Ltd ran from 22 May 2023 to 31 January 2025, so he did not have two years’ service for an ordinary unfair dismissal claim.

The tribunal found that the first disclosure email of 15 January 2025 was a response to a query about how quarterly Scottish Government figures had been prepared. Although the email referred to figures and included hyperlinks, the claimant accepted in evidence that he was then trying to clarify whether his own department had followed the correct procedure and that he did not at that stage believe any section 43B circumstance existed. The tribunal held that the email did not convey a belief that wrongdoing had occurred, and that the embedded links did not take it over the threshold for a protected disclosure.

The second disclosure email, sent later that morning, was also found not to be a protected disclosure. It compared contact figures and referred to abandoned or missed calls, but the tribunal held that it did not communicate an assertion that the respondent had breached a legal obligation or committed fraud. The claimant’s evidence showed he had misunderstood the reporting arrangements, including how the respondent was funded, what was reported to SG and CITA, and whether contacts by people outside Scotland were reported. The tribunal concluded that any belief he later developed was not reasonably held at the time of the email.

The same conclusion was reached in relation to the Teams messages and the in-person discussions. The first Teams message was a process reminder, and the second repeated the email wording without adding a protected disclosure. The meetings were treated as questions and discussion about reporting definitions and procedures rather than disclosures of information. Applying the statutory test and the authorities it cited, including Williams v Brown, Cavendish Munro, Chesterton Global v Nurmohamed, and Durey, the tribunal held that Mr Sarkar had made no protected disclosures, with the result that the detriment claim and the automatic unfair dismissal claim were dismissed.