Charity trustees may now be protected as whistleblowers

Charity trustees may now be protected as whistleblowers

At Stewardship, we love to work to support and enable your charities and churches to run with good governance in order to be the most effective and God honouring you can be in furthering God’s Kingdom. We all know that even Christian charities and churches will sometimes encounter immoral or illegal behaviour in their operations, and these must be handled with honesty, integrity and respect. Therefore, enabling whistleblowers to speak out appropriately without fear of reprisals, even if their concerns are found to be ungrounded, is a very important aspect of any church or charity culture.

It is therefore noteworthy for churches and charities that trustees may now be protected as whistleblowers, in the same way that workers are. This means that you should have appropriate procedures in place for trustees to raise whistleblowing concerns.

Protections for whistleblowers

Whistleblowing is the act someone takes, usually as an employee, to report suspected wrongdoing or dangers in relation to the church or charity. This includes illegal, immoral, unsafe or fraudulent activity. The law provides protection for whistleblowers from reprisals, unfair treatment or detriment that they may experience as a result of their whistleblowing activity.

Until now, these whistleblowing protections have applied to workers. Workers have been able to bring Employment Tribunal claims for any detrimental treatment arising from whistleblowing concerns they have raised. However, a recent ruling by the Employment Appeal Tribunal opens the door for the extension of these protections to trustees, meaning that trustees may in future be able to bring Employment Tribunal claims in these cases. This could lead to financial awards to a claimant trustee.

Although a trustee is not a worker, and is (usually) unpaid, the judge recognised that trustees can have significant responsibilities and therefore have a status, for these purposes, similar to paid employees. The judge has ruled that the case should be reconsidered by the Employment Tribunal, which may result in trustees being formally included in these protections.

Do you have a whistleblowing policy for workers?

We encourage you to make sure that your church or charity has a whistleblowing policy in place that is fit for purpose. This will include providing clear confidential procedures that can be followed by those who have concerns that they wish to raise. And will also seek to ensure that those who bring whistleblowing concerns are not treated detrimentally for having raised those concerns.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations provides useful guidance on whistleblowing policies and procedures and has a sample policy What you need to know about whistleblowing | NCVO

Stewardship also has a model whistleblowing policy in the Contract Pack that we have produced in partnership with Anthony Collins solicitors LLP, which can be purchased from our Online Shop Employment contract pack for churches (standard).

Do you have a process by which trustees’ concerns can be raised and looked in to?

Now that the Employment Appeals Tribunal has suggested that trustees could have the same whistleblower protections as workers, this is a good time to ensure that your church or charity has an appropriate procedure for trustees to raise their concerns. This is likely to be a slightly different procedure than one that you have for employees, as the person/people they can report their concerns to may need to be different.

Please note that this does not extend other rights of workers to trustees.