A sacked care manager has issued a claim in the Employment Tribunal after she was dismissed from her job last year.
Mrs Donna Savigar worked for a period of five years as a care manager for Stoke-on-Trent council until she was dismissed in 2012. The reason for her dismissal is not clear but she contends that she was dismissed by the Council after making contended protected disclosures to her employer in 2012. She brought an Employment Tribunal claim after she was dismissed and the matter came to a Pre Hearing Review earlier this month in order to determine whether Mrs Savigar’s claims had prospects of success.
Mrs Savigar claimed at the Tribunal that she had lost her job as a result after making allegations that some residents had not been treated as well as they should have and also claimed that the allegations that she had made had not been properly investigated by her employer. She also claimed that the Council’s management had failed to support her after she had made the allegations, contending that one of the directors had been aggressive to her after she had made the contended protected disclosures.
The Employment Tribunal ruled in Mrs Savigar’s favour in her Pre Hearing Review at the Birmingham Employment Tribunal. Tribunal Judge Mr Robin Balmain stated that she could go ahead with her claim as she had submitted it only four days pas t the deadline and that her claim did not have no prospects of success at a full hearing. The matter will now go to a full hearing, to be arranged in the future.
Chris Hadrill, an employment solicitor at Redmans, commented: “Whistleblowing claims can be difficult to run for claimants but if they can point to credible evidence that they have made protected disclosures and that they have been treated in a particular (detrimental) manner after that they then may be able to succeed with their claims.”
“Whistleblowing claims” are common parlance for a claim in the Employment Tribunal for detriment and/or dismissal because of any protected disclosures that the employee or worker alleges that they have made. Whistleblowing claims can often be difficult to prove as the affected worker will have to prove that they made a protected disclosure, that their employer knew of the protected disclosure and that the protected disclosure was the cause or the principal cause of any detriment they suffered, including dismissal.
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