What is whistleblowing?
Whistleblowing is the term used when someone who works for an employer raises a concern about malpractice, risk (for example about patient safety), wrongdoing or possible illegality, which harms, or creates a risk of harm, to people who use the service, colleagues or the wider public.
Ideally, such concerns should be dealt with by the employer. However, if the management have not dealt with those concerns by responding appropriately to them, perhaps by using the employer’s own whistleblowing policy, or the worker does not feel confident that the management will deal with those concerns properly, they can instead make a disclosure to the regulator.
The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) protects workers by providing a remedy if they suffer a workplace reprisal for raising a concern which they believe to be genuine. Disclosures could be about the safety of patients or people who use services, the failure of a provider to comply with the law, or the national standards of quality and safety, financial malpractice or risks to staff or other people.
Is whistleblowing the same as making a complaint?
No. Whistleblowing is different from a complaint or a grievance and usually refers to situations where a worker raises a concern about something they have witnessed at their workplace.
People who use services, their relatives or representatives, or others, can make complaints about a service using the service's complaints procedure. This is not whistleblowing. Good employment practice includes providing a grievance procedure for staff to use in respect of their employment rights and conditions of service.
For further information about how we deal with whistleblowers’ concerns, view the whistleblowing policy.
Last update: 10th January 2023
Next update: 10th January 2025