{"id":1706,"date":"2015-04-20T18:52:47","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T18:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-thoughts\/?p=1706"},"modified":"2015-05-15T19:48:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T19:48:26","slug":"whistleblowing-in-the-public-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/whistleblowing-in-the-public-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblowing \u2013 personal concerns surprisingly still protected"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span class=\"blue\">What is the legal development?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Disclosures in relation to personal employment contracts can still amount to \u2018protected disclosures\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013 the requirement for \u2018good faith\u2019 when making a protected disclosure was replaced by the need for the disclosure to be made in the reasonable belief that it is \u2018in the public interest\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>A recent <a title=\"Chesterton v Nurmohamed\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bailii.org\/uk\/cases\/UKEAT\/2015\/0335_14_0804.html\">EAT case<\/a> considered facts where a manager complained that the over stated costs of running the Respondent\u2019s London office had an adverse impact on his bonus (as with 100 other senior managers). The EAT concluded that even though the prime motivation was to secure his own bonus, as he also had in mind his colleagues, the disclosure could be in the \u2018public interest\u2019 and therefore amount to a protected disclosure.<\/p>\n<p>It was thought that the changes in 2013 would deprive employees of the \u2018whistleblower\u2018 protections if they were simply raising concerns about their personal employment contract. This case suggests that such disclosures could still be protected if the issue raised has wider impact for other employees, and there is a reasonable belief that the disclosure is made in the public interest.<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"blue\">What does this mean for employers?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Take care when addressing any individual conduct or performance. Even if the performance or conduct appears to be entirely separate, it is worth checking that it really is unrelated to some other action that amounts to a \u2018protected disclosure\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the legal development? Disclosures in relation to personal employment contracts can still amount to \u2018protected disclosures\u2019. In 2013 the requirement for \u2018good faith\u2019 when making a protected disclosure was replaced by the need for the disclosure to be made in the reasonable belief that it is \u2018in the public interest\u2019. A recent EAT &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/whistleblowing-in-the-public-interest\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Whistleblowing \u2013 personal concerns surprisingly still protected<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1706"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1784,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1706\/revisions\/1784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramsaypaterson.co.uk\/legal-comment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}