I am employed by a company in the heavy metals industry. I am concerned about the work practices of my employer. These do not comply with industry best practice or legislative requirements, and my employer simply lets our waste and by-products leach into the surrounding land and rivers. Not only does this pollute and contaminate the land, but I also fear that it could be storing up a health risk for future generations. I am tempted to contact the local press to tip them off about this. Should I, or is there something else I can do?

We would urge you to hold fire on tipping off the local press, and instead recommend that you check (as confidentially as possible) whether your employer has a Whistleblowing Policy. If there is such a policy, it may set out the procedure that you should follow to raise your concerns internally.

You may have heard about legislation called the Public Interest Disclosure (NI) Order 1998. This gives employees and workers some protection if they choose to blow the whistle on malpractice at work. It operates on two levels.

The dismissal of an employee will be automatically unfair if the reason, or principal reason, for their dismissal is that they have “whistleblown” (or to use the technical terminology, made a “protected disclosure”). The legislation also protects workers from being subjected to any detriment on the ground that they have made a protected disclosure.

However, in order for your concerns and your disclosure to be covered by the legislation, there are number of strict conditions to meet. First, your disclosure must count as a “qualifying disclosure”. From what you say, I think there is little doubt that you would be making a “qualifying disclosure”.

This is a disclosure of information which, in the reasonable belief of the worker making it, shows that one or more specified types of malpractice has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place. The categories of wrongdoing covered by the legislation are extremely wide. They include criminal offences, (the very vague) “breaches of any legal obligation”, danger to health and safety of any individual and (crucially for these purposes) damage to the environment.

Second, your disclosure must count as a “protected disclosure” and this condition centres around the identity of the person or organisation to whom you make your disclosure. The legislation encourages disclosure to your employer (internal disclosure) as the primary method of whistleblowing.

Disclosure to third parties (external disclosure) may be protected but only if more onerous conditions are met. For instance, if you wanted to tip off the press, you would have to demonstrate that you had already raised the matter with your employer, or that you reasonably feared retaliation from your employer.

Third, your disclosure must be made in good faith. Many of the reported cases involving external disclosure to the media have failed on this limb. For a disclosure to the press to have been made in good faith, there must be special features, such as a high degree of urgency or an inability to raise concerns properly through other avenues.

Tribunals so far seem to have been suspicious of the motivations of employees who choose to go straight to the media - are they genuinely concerned about fixing the problem, or more concerned about causing maximum damage to their employer?

So, in answer to your question, by whistleblowing to the local press, you could be depriving yourself of very valuable employment protections. If your employer finds out that you are the “mole” and chooses to dismiss you because of that, you may have little or no unfair dismissal protection. As frightening as it might seem to raise the matter internally first, legally it is the safer course of action.

For an example of an environmental whistleblowing case, see the GB case (with identical legislation) Wharton v Ward Recycling. In that case, the employee chose to make an external disclosure (although not to the press - he made the disclosure to the client, a local authority, for whom his employer was contracted to collect recycling materials). In the circumstances of that case, Mr Wharton had still met all the conditions for a “protected disclosure” and so was covered by the legislation.