Miss J Sayany, Lay Representative For the v Respondent — 2024

This reserved preliminary judgment concerned whether the claimant had made protected public interest disclosures for the purposes of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The tribunal applied the structured approach in the authorities it cited, including Kilraine, Chesterton Global, Cavendish Munro and Williams v Michelle Brown, and held that the claimant had not established qualifying disclosures for the purposes of his whistleblowing case overall. Disclosure 7 was withdrawn at the hearing, and the remaining allegations were considered individually and then in aggregate.

The tribunal accepted that several of the emails and discussions contained information about recruitment, department structure and the claimant’s concerns about Mr Fontaine’s handling of the process, but held that D1, D2 and D3 did not provide sufficient factual content and specificity to tend to show likely endangerment of health and safety. D4 was found to contain information about recruitment, management lines and the claimant’s exclusion from the process, but again the tribunal was not satisfied that it amounted to sufficient information showing likely health and safety endangerment, or that Mr Fontaine would reasonably have understood it that way. D5 similarly focused on reforming the department into an engineering team and did not articulate a health and safety risk to occupiers of buildings.

D6 failed on the health and safety aspect for the same reasons, but the separate allegation that the email disclosed a breach of legal obligation under the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 also failed because the claimant did not identify the Regulations until late in the proceedings and did not explain how the email showed a breach or a reasonable belief in one. For D8, the tribunal accepted that the first fire-stopping complaint contained sufficient information to tend to show likely endangerment, but held that the claimant lacked a reasonable belief because the associated meeting showed further training and guidance were being pursued; the AG/fire-sprinkler point also failed because the email did not express the alleged concern and the claimant could not reasonably think Mr Broom shared that impression. For D9, the tribunal found the extracts about recruitment, department management and the claimant’s exclusion from discussions were not enough to show a reasonable belief in health and safety endangerment, including in relation to AG.

Because no qualifying disclosure was established, the tribunal dismissed the claimant’s complaints of detriment and unfair dismissal under sections 47B and 103A ERA 1996. The judgment states that the remaining claims were to proceed separately; it does not determine the race discrimination claim in this decision.