Our Impact

Every year Protect helps thousands of people understand their legal rights and navigate safe whistleblowing. We work with hundreds of organisations to help them set up and enhance their whistleblowing arrangements and we campaign for legal and policy reform to better protect whistleblowing.

Impact in 2024

Demand for Protect’s services has continued to grow year on year. The number of calls to our legal advice line increased by 10% from 2023, to its highest level since the pandemic. Many of those getting in touch are in crisis – more than two thirds of our callers who had reported their concerns told us they were being victimised, bullied, facing dismissal or felt forced into resigning. Being able to receive measured and confidential advice provides a lifeline when they need it most.

2024 was our busiest year since during Covid with 3,336 new cases – a rise of 10% on the previous year
The majority of calls came from the public sector (41%) with a just over a quarter from the private sector (26%) and a fifth from the charity sector (21%). The remainder of calls (12%) were divided across a range of smaller sectors.
Calls came from a wide variety of industries with most calls from health and social work (30%), education (13%) and financial services (7%).

Read 2024 Impact Report now

Download now

Legal Interventions

We intervened in two crucial cases at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2024. We only take the step to submit evidence as an independent third party in cases that have the potential to impact the existing whistleblowing law and when the case gives rise to important issues of public policy.

In MacLennan vs The British Psychological Society we intervened in a landmark case which allows UK charity trustees to receive whistleblowing protection if they suffer adverse treatment for speaking up. This case directly opens up potential protection to the (approximately) one million trustees in the UK.
Our action to intervene in another case helped retain the ability for whistleblowers to get compensation for their non-financial losses. In the Employment Appeal Tribunal between Declan Durey and South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust there was a risk that the established “injury to feelings” award for whistleblowers could have been dismantled. Any change to this law would have had serious consequences to future pay-outs. Compensation for the emotional distress caused by acts of victimisation by their employer can be the main compensation claimed for any whistleblower who remains in their job.

A focus on corruption

A big win this year was to persuade the Home Office officials to put whistleblowing front and centre and include a reference to Protect in their latest statutory guidance on the new offence of failure to prevent fraud. This requires employers to:

training staff to ensure they are aware of internal whistleblowing procedures and how to respond when whistleblowing concerns are raised,
carrying out risk assessments,
keeping whistleblowing systems under review, including, if appropriate, external assessment of the arrangements.

Redefining whistleblowing in business

Sitting alongside Protect’s aim to improve whistleblowing law is the work we do directly with employers to promote ethical standards of conduct in the workplace. 2024 was a year of extensive training, consultancy and activity to connect, inform and support organisations motivated to improve and prioritise their whistleblowing systems.

We reached a major milestone with our three core training courses: Whistleblowing Essentials, Investigating a Whistleblowing Concern and Preventing Whistleblower Victimisation, plus Financial Services Whistleblower’s Champion all awarded CPD (Continued Professional Development) accreditation.
Our industry-leading benchmark and scanner assessments were completed by 25 organisations, allowing them to identify the assess and strengthen their whistleblowing arrangements.
We ran a number of webinars and breakfast briefings direct with employers across the year sharing industry knowledge and legal insights engaging with a wider audience.

Wider Impact

Needless to say we had a very exciting year, and ventured into some uncharted territory with a variety of whistleblowing projects.

In an unusual collaboration we supported the BBC’s Casualty drama scriptwriters to understand the practicalities of whistleblowing law for a multi-episode storyline. Following this, we were invited onto the Third Sector podcast to talk about our work with BBC Casualty and what it entailed.
As part of the Thirlwall Inquiry, examining the circumstances surrounding the crimes of Lucy Letby, we submitted evidence drawing on the experiences of callers to our whistleblowing advice line and best practice within NHS settings.
We won the award for the best In-House Legal team at the inaugural Legal ESG Awards (Environmental, Social and Governance) and were Highly Commended in the Sustainability category for our Environmental Whistleblowing project at the 2024 LexisNexis Legal Awards.