Protect’s Advice Line is unique in two crucial ways:
1) The sheer volume of whistleblowers who contact it (more than 45,000 to date)
2) The support it provides.
To our knowledge, there are no other free legal advicelines for whistleblowers. We are unique in providing in-depth expert advice on what rights whistleblowers have at their disposal or how to raise concerns in the most effective way.
Our advice webpages have a wealth of practical information. There are templates on how to raise a concern or what to put in a claim form. As a result, many whistleblowers who come to us ‘self-serve’ and don’t necessarily contact us directly. But providing detailed, customised, individual and in-depth advice by telephone or email has always been at the heart of our charity, and to date we have done so to more 45,000 whistleblowers.
Our Advice Line is a lifeboat for many whistleblowers. This month for instance one of our callers wrote:
“You’ve been the person that has held me together throughout this. I’ve spoken to my friends and family a lot about this but I have never met anyone like yourself, and I have never seen someone go above and beyond helping me. Through such a difficult time, if I didn’t have yourself I don’t know what I would do.”
We often help whistleblowers over a significant period of time. In fact, we recommend calling our advice line as early as possible in the process. Whistleblowing in most cases is a journey. We support them throughout the process, from the point they’ve seen something going wrong, or may have raised a concern informally with their line manager up to when they feel they have no other choice than to escalate it to their regulator.
Typically, out of the 297 whistleblowers we talked to last month 76 had contacted us previously. That’s roughly a quarter who had more than one interaction with our Advice Line.
Our free Advice Line number is 020 3117 2520. We are open Mon, Tue, Thurs: 9:30am – 1pm, 2pm – 5:30pm; Wed, Fri: 9:30am – 1pm. Alternatively you can email us or contact us via a webcontact form. Protect is the UK’s leading whistleblowing charity. If you work in the UK and would like advice on your whistleblowing rights or how to raise a whistleblowing concern, contact us.