Whistleblowing - Guidance for Charities

Partner Nick Burrows, in our Charities & Education team, explains whistleblowing and guidance for charities.

Workers who ‘blow the whistle’, or raise a ‘protected disclosure’ benefit from increased protection under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (the Act). The Charity Commission has recently issued guidance for employees to report concerns about certain categories of serious wrongdoing at their charity to the Commission which is recognised as being one of the prescribed bodies to contact.

In order to qualify for the additional protection, the disclosure made by the employee must comply with the statutory definition of a protected disclosure and must be a disclosure of information which:

• is in the reasonable belief of the employee making it,
• is made in the public interest; and
• identifies one or more of six specified types of wrongdoing listed within the Act.

The Act protects most employees in the charity sector who report concerns about certain serious matters about their employer to the Commission with the exception of the following:

• genuinely self-employed professionals (other than in the NHS).
• Voluntary workers – this includes charity trustees (who should report concerns via serious incident reporting); and
• charity volunteers.

How the Act protects charity employees

The Act protects employees in a number of ways, for example:

• If a charity employee is dismissed because they have made a ‘protected disclosure’, the dismissal will be treated as an unfair dismissal.
• The employee has a right not to be subjected to any ‘detriment’ by their employers on the ground that they have made a protected disclosure, and to present a complaint to an employment tribunal if they suffer detriment as a result of making a protected disclosure.

In its guidance, the Commission has emphasised that it will respect confidence so far as it is able, with regard to the individual’s rights to privacy under data protection and human rights legislation. However, the Commission does clarify that a person who is subject to any enquiries made by the Commission is entitled to know the nature of the allegations being made. 

It is important for voluntary sector charities to consider whether the organisation has a clear whistleblowing policy in place to deal with any areas of concern effectively and whether the policy has been adequately promoted internally as although a policy is not required by law, it should be considered by all charities as a matter of good practice.

The implementation of a whistleblowing policy will help to ensure that organisations have an open culture and is likely to decrease the possibility of a whistleblower reporting an incident to an external interested party without first giving the charity the opportunity to carry out an internal investigation.  

You can find the government guidance for implementing and publicising whistleblowing policies here and the Commission’s most recent guidance on this topic here.

For further information or legal advice, please contact law@blandy.co.uk or call 0118 951 6800.