To be protected, a whistleblowing disclosure has to convey facts, not just state a position.
“A concern is protected when it conveys facts, so state what happened rather than just that you object.”
A concern is protected when it conveys facts, so state what happened rather than just that you object.
- Write down the specific facts: what, who, when, and why it concerns you.
- Avoid raising a concern only as a bargaining position in a dispute or negotiation.
- Keep a dated copy of anything you send, so there is a clear record of what you disclosed.
The situation
The workerA legal category that sits between employee and self-employed. Workers are entitled to certain rights including national minimum wage, paid holiday, and protection from unlawful deduction from wages, ... was a director and employee of a professional risks management company, holding a minority shareholding alongside two other directors. Tensions built through late 2007, and by early 2008 the other directors were discussing buying out his shareholding and removing him. He instructed a solicitor, who wrote to the two remaining directors setting out his position on the validity of the shareholder agreement and on unfair prejudice to him as a shareholder. The day after that letter, he was dismissed, and he later argued the letter was a protected disclosureThe legal term for a qualifying whistleblowing report. For a disclosure to be protected it must relate to specific categories of wrongdoing, you must reasonably believe it is true, and in most cases i... that made his dismissal automatically unfair.
What the tribunal found
The Employment Appeal Tribunal held that the letter was not a qualifying disclosureInformation you disclose in the reasonable belief that it's in the public interest and that it shows wrongdoing, such as a crime, breach of a legal obligation, or (since April 2026) sexual harassment..... It read as a statement of the worker's position, sent in the course of negotiations, rather than a disclosure of information. The law draws a line between conveying information, which means telling someone facts, and simply making an allegation or asserting a position. Because the letter did not convey facts tending to show a relevant wrongdoing, it fell on the wrong side of that line, and the worker did not have the protection he claimed.
Cavendish Munro Professional Risks Management Ltd v Geduld | [2010] IRLR 38; UKEAT/0195/09/DM | Employment Appeal Tribunal | 6 August 2009