Kent NHS Whistleblowing: Freedom to Speak Up Promises vs Tribunal Reality

THE NHS will always need whistleblowers. Healthcare is complex, rapidly changing and dangerous; staff are fallible, variably trained and widely spaced; and demands are huge and resources limited. No matter how much is spent on regulation and risk management, shit will always happen – mistakes, incompetence, inhumane treatment and corruption.

Dr Phil Hammond and Andrew Bousfield – Private Eye Magazine

We start there because it’s the only honest place to start. Not with slogans. Not with posters about “psychological safety”. Not with “lessons learned” PowerPoint. With the reality that the NHS is a high-risk, high-pressure machine, run by humans, where harm can happen even with the best intentions — and where the people closest to risk are often the first to see it.

That’s why whistleblowers exist. They are not “troublemakers” by definition. They are often the early warning system.

And that’s why Private Eye’s special report Shoot the Messenger lands like a brick. It argues that when staff do speak up about serious failings, the system too often treats the speaker as the problem: isolating them, reframing the warning as “an employment dispute”, deploying legal and HR machinery, and ending the story behind closed doors.

Kent & Medway’s official paperwork, meanwhile, reads like the antidote. The Kent & Medway ICB’s Freedom to Speak Up policy calls speaking up “a gift”, promises that nobody will be prevented, deterred or mistreated for speaking up, and sets out multiple routes for raising concerns — including escalation to a named executive lead and a named non-executive “fresh pair of eyes”. It also offers open/confidential/anonymous reporting options and points staff to external advice and support bodies.

So here is the question we set ourselves, as The Shepway Vox Team:

When we look at what’s actually published — policies, annual reporting, board papers, FOI disclosures and tribunal decision records — does “Kent reality” look more like the ICB’s promise, or more like Private Eye’s warning?

We can’t read minds, we can’t see confidential settlements, and we can’t pry open HR files. But we can do something else: map what is verifiable, and then say clearly where the public cannot see what it needs to see.

The two stories: “speak up and we’ll protect you” versus “speak up and you become the risk”

Private Eye’s report is built around case studies, but it also describes a recognisable pattern:

• concerns reframed as “performance”, “behaviour”, or “team conflict”;

• internal investigations that lack genuine independence;

• escalation into disciplinary and regulatory pathways;

• and, repeatedly, disputes brought to a quiet end by agreements that keep details out of the public domain.

A key theme is the use of settlement and confidentiality to contain reputational harm. Private Eye argues that the system has learned to make the problem disappear by making the person disappear — or at least disappear from view.

Kent & Medway ICB’s policy tells a different story. It sets out a structured route for concerns, commits to action and learning, and explicitly frames mistreatment for speaking up as unacceptable.

But — and this is crucial — the policy also contains the seed of the visibility problem. It says outcomes will be shared “wherever possible”, but warns that some matters may be so confidential that the organisation may not be able to share the outcome at all.

That’s realistic, lawful, sometimes necessary. It’s also the exact gap in which public confidence dies. Because “we dealt with it” is not evidence. It’s a statement.

The policy also recognises that many concerns will be routed into other organisational processes, including HR. Again: sometimes appropriate, sometimes unavoidable — but Private Eye’s whole thesis is that this “HR-isation” is precisely how patient safety becomes an employment battlefield.

So we moved from principles to records. We looked at each trust you specified and asked three practical questions:

1. Can the public find their Freedom to Speak Up / whistleblowing policy as a document?

2. Do they publish annual Freedom to Speak Up reporting (numbers, themes, outcomes) — and where?

3. In the public record from 1 Jan 2023 to 20 Jan 2026, are there tribunal decisions explicitly tagged as Public Interest Disclosure (whistleblowing law) or other disputes that show how these conflicts surface?

Everything below sticks to what we can cite.

What “tribunal cases withdrawn” really means — and why it matters

Before we get trust-by-trust, we need to deal with one of the biggest sources of misunderstanding: tribunal visibility.

When you see an Employment Tribunal decision listing on GOV.UK, you are not seeing “all claims brought”. You are seeing published decisions — a subset. Many disputes settle at Acas early conciliation or later, and never result in a published decision. 

Even where a case is listed, the label can be procedural (“Dismissal”, “Strike out”, “Preliminary”, “Reconsideration”) and may not be a full merits hearing on all facts. Several Kent cases in our window are published as dismissal, preliminary, strike-out or reconsideration decisions.

And yes — you asked why so many appear “withdrawn” or end early. Here’s the cautious, evidence-based answer:

• The ICB policy itself points people to support bodies and routes because the legal framework around “protected disclosures” is complex and can hinge on technical tests.

• Private Eye’s report argues that litigation asymmetry and organisational risk-management can wear down whistleblowers, making early endings more likely.

• Tribunal outcomes like “dismissal” can occur without a full public airing of the underlying dispute; settlement, withdrawal and procedural steps mean the public often never sees the core allegation tested in open court.

We can’t safely write “the NHS pressured them to withdraw” for any individual case without specific evidence in a published judgment. What we can safely say is this:

The system produces lots of early endings — and those early endings can reduce public visibility even when the underlying issue was serious. That is exactly the accountability gap Private Eye complains about.

With that clarity, here is what we found trust-by-trust.

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (EKHUFT): “independent guardian” meets tribunal reality

What is publicly visible in this sweep is a deliberate shift toward independence in the listening function. EKHUFT procured an independent Freedom to Speak Up Guardian service, described as an independent service with reporting requirements. EKHUFT’s 2024/25 Quality Account states that the trust implemented a new Freedom to Speak Up service using an external provider (Guardian Service) from March 2025.

On one reading, this is straightforward progress: if staff doubt internal routes, an external guardian can increase confidence and reporting. On another reading, it is a response to a credibility deficit: an admission that an internal “speak up” system may not have been trusted enough to do the job.

The public record also shows tribunal disputes in the 2023–2026 window, including published decisions for Akinmeji v East Kent University NHS Trust (19 Jan 2023), Slade v EKHUFT (16 May 2024) and Plummer v EKHUFT (6 Jun 2024). The Plummer entry is particularly relevant to our whistleblowing lens because the published decision listing includes “Public Interest Disclosure” among the jurisdictions (i.e., whistleblowing law was pleaded).

We are not saying those cases prove a culture of retaliation. We are saying they prove this: even where a trust is strengthening its Freedom to Speak Up infrastructure, disputes that touch whistleblowing protections still surface in formal litigation channels — and those channels often deliver limited public learning.

That is the tension Private Eye wants people to see.

Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust (MTW): high volumes of speaking up — mostly about behaviour and safety

MTW’s Quality Accounts are unusually concrete. In its 2024/25 Quality Account, MTW reports 186 contacts to Freedom to Speak Up in the year and breaks them down into categories including bullying and harassment, patient safety, health and safety, and other concerns. MTW’s 2022/23 Quality Account reports 117 concerns raised through Freedom to Speak Up for that year.

That matters because it punctures the myth that “speaking up” is always dramatic whistleblowing. Much of it is culture. And culture is not a side issue: it’s the soil in which patient safety either grows or rots. If staff can’t speak up about bullying, they’re unlikely to feel safe speaking up about unsafe care.

The tribunal record in our window includes published decisions for Buckingham v MTW (24 Jul 2024) and Slade v MTW (24 Oct 2024). These are published as reconsideration and dismissal decision types respectively.

Again: not proof of wrongdoing; proof of something else — that even in a trust with sizeable “speak up” caseload, some disputes still end up in formal processes that the public can’t easily translate into “was the safety problem fixed?”

And that is the heart of the Private Eye critique: institutions can tick every governance box and still not supply the public with confidence-building evidence about outcomes.

Kent & Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT): FOI proof of whistleblowing-triggered investigations, plus tribunal visibility

KMPT gives us one of the cleanest “did whistleblowers exist in the period?” answers — because a published FOI response says so.

In January 2025, KMPT responded to an FOI request confirming that since 1 January 2023, it had started and/or concluded an internal or external review or investigation of a medical staff member following “a whistleblower or patient raising concerns” (with details withheld due to small numbers and identification risk). The same response states that KMPT’s Freedom to Speak Up service is provided by Guardian Service (external).

That is a major finding because it is not inference; it is a documented statement: whistleblowing exists, and it has triggered investigative action in the time window we are examining.

The tribunal record also shows multiple published decisions in the period: Chandler v KMPT (11 Aug 2023), Appasamy v KMPT (17 Aug 2023), Nightingale v KMPT (1 May 2024), and Wells v KMPT (7 Jan 2025). Notably, Chandler’s listing includes Public Interest Disclosure among jurisdictions (whistleblowing pleaded).

So KMPT is the trust where Kent’s formal narrative (“we have external guardians and processes”) and Private Eye’s warning (“watch what happens when it becomes a dispute”) collide most clearly in the public record.

Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT): a published whistleblowing policy, and the strongest tribunal “signal” in our sweep

KCHFT publishes a whistleblowing policy PDF, which is, in practical terms, a close cousin of “Freedom to Speak Up policy” in many organisations’ naming conventions. KCHFT also publishes annual report and accounts documentation, including 2024/25.

But the most visible public accountability trail in our window comes via tribunal decisions. We identified published tribunal decision pages for:

• Ojeniyi v KCHFT (30 Jul 2025) — a reconsideration decision explicitly labelled with “Public Interest Disclosure” jurisdiction.

• Ashiogu v KCHFT (18 Oct 2024) — judgment.

• Azeez and others v KCHFT (21 Jan 2025) — includes a strike-out decision.

• Hogben v KCHFT (16 Jul 2024) — reserved judgment.

• Gedling v KCHFT (23 Feb 2024) — dismissal.

A lay conclusion we can safely draw is not “KCHFT is bad”. It is: KCHFT is tribunal-visible in this period in a way that some peers are not, including at least one case explicitly tagged as Public Interest Disclosure. That visibility does not tell us who was right, but it does tell us that workplace disputes — including whistleblowing-framed ones — are reaching formal adjudication stages with published outputs.

And once again, the Private Eye point returns: the public record is a sliver. Much more may sit in settlements or non-published case outcomes.

Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust (DGT): the absence of published tribunal decisions is not proof of absence

In this sweep, we did not identify a published tribunal decision page naming Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust with a decision date within 1 Jan 2023–20 Jan 2026; searches returned older published decisions outside the window.

We cannot responsibly spin that into a narrative of “no issues”. The most cautious, accurate statement is:

There is no in-window published tribunal decision page we identified in this sweep for DGT — which may reflect settlement, non-publication, different naming conventions, or simply the limits of the published decisions database.

DGT’s public policies portal indicates that some policies may be accessible by request rather than being readily downloadable. From a transparency standpoint, that matters: if the public cannot easily find the rulebook, it becomes harder to independently assess whether “speak up” is a living system or a compliance statement.

The Kent verdict, as far as published records allow

Here is what we can say, carefully, without overreach:

1. Kent has the right words. The ICB policy language is clear: speaking up is valued; mistreatment is not tolerated; routes exist; external bodies are signposted; senior oversight is defined.

2. Some Kent trusts publish useful numbers. MTW’s Quality Accounts, for example, provide annual Freedom to Speak Up contact volumes and categories.

3. External guardian models are spreading. EKHUFT and KMPT evidence an external “Guardian Service” model in published material. That is a meaningful structural response to concerns about independence.

4. Whistleblowing is not hypothetical in Kent in this window. KMPT’s FOI response confirms investigations triggered by whistleblower/patient concerns since 1 Jan 2023. Tribunal records in this period include cases tagged with Public Interest Disclosure jurisdictions at EKHUFT, KMPT and KCHFT.

5. But the public still cannot see enough to judge outcomes. The ICB policy itself warns that outcomes may not always be shareable due to confidentiality. Tribunal processes and settlements mean many disputes end without a public narrative. That invisibility is not automatically malign — but Private Eye’s allegation is that it can become a tool for institutional self-protection.

So our bottom line, as The Shepway Vox Team, is this:

Kent’s “speak up” ecosystem shows improvement in structure and reporting, and it is clearly active. But the core accountability gap Private Eye warns about remains: when speaking up gets uncomfortable — when it threatens reputations, careers, or powerful people — the public record often cannot show what happened next.

That isn’t a moral judgement. It’s a visibility judgement.

What we would ask next (because this is the only way to close the gap)

We would ask each trust, and the ICB as system leader, to publish (in anonymised, aggregated form) what the public currently cannot see:

• the number of FTSU cases each year, and the proportion that become formal investigations;

• timeliness: how long to acknowledge, investigate, and close;

• outcome-types: what changed (policy, staffing, training, supervision, escalation routes, equipment, audit);

• “no detriment” monitoring: how it is measured and what is done when detriment is identified;

• the relationship between FTSU and HR pathways (how often concerns migrate into grievance/disciplinary/capability processes);

• and how learning is preserved when disputes are settled or withdrawn.

Because in a system as complex and dangerous as the NHS, the only thing worse than a whistleblower is a whistleblower who never speaks up.

NB: All tribunal decision pages identified in this blog are between 1 Jan 2023–20 Jan 2026. They are not “all claims brought.”

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent Is NOT A Crime