Chestertons v Nurmohamed
The Employment Appeals Tribunal (“EAT”) has held in this case that a disclosure can be made in the ‘reasonable belief it is in the public interest’ if it relates to a contractual dispute affecting a group of staff, and not the wider public.
The whistleblower, a director in the Respondent’s estate agency’s Mayfair office, made a protected disclosure by complaining that it was overstating costs for its London office, thus driving down the bonuses for him and 100 senior managers.
The employment tribunal found that the disclosure was made with a reasonable belief that it was ‘in the public interest’, and the Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld the decision.
The EAT stated that an individual contractual dispute would not normally satisfy the public interest test, but a disclosure relating to a relatively small group of people may do so; what is sufficient is necessarily fact-sensitive.
The purpose of the statute is to encourage responsible whistleblowing, and the public interest test can be satisfied even where the basis of the disclosure is wrong and/or there was no public interest in the disclosure, provided that the worker’s belief that the disclosure was made in the public interest was objectively reasonable. The ‘public interest’ requirement did no more than prevent a worker from relying upon a breach of his own contract of employment where the breach is of a personal nature and there are no wider public interest implications.
In Practice
Paul Burton, Employment Associate says, “Since the change in the law in 2013, many employers have wrongly assumed that a disclosure has to be in the public interest in order to succeed with a whistleblowing claim. However, this is not the correct test. The individual making the disclosure only has to have a reasonable belief that it is in the public interest.” It does not matter if they are, in fact, wrong, they will still be able to go ahead with a whistleblowing claim. It is the case, of course, that to succeed they still have to show they have either suffered a detriment or been dismissed because they made the disclosure, and not for some other reason.
At Frettens, all of our solicitors offer a free initial meeting or chat on the phone to answer your questions. If this article raises issues for you or your business, please call us on 01202 499255 and Kate or Paul will be happy to discuss it with you.
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