Email: Not a protected disclosure
An employee at a claims firm who sent an all-staff email entitled “Why I wasn’t at the Christmas party – and why I am taking the company to tribunal” did not make a protected disclosure, a judge has ruled.
Employment Judge Batten said The Claims Protection Agency (TCPA), trading as My Claim Group, believed that Mr J Atkinson was trying to extract a £1m settlement.
Mr Atkinson brought a claim of unfair dismissal for making protected disclosures accompanied by an application for interim relief; the tribunal was dealing with the application.
In October 2025, he had initially resigned when somebody else was appointed as head of data but then withdrew his resignation and instead issued a grievance alleging that the company was downgrading his job.
“The claimant asserted his belief that this was because of his disability and mentioned a potential tribunal claim and a potential settlement,” the judge recorded.
In early December, before a decision on the grievance, Mr Atkinson sent his employer a ‘Formal Notice of Liability and Demand for Settlement’, which included threats to report the company to the Financial Conduct Authority, its regulator.
The judge said: “This amounted to a demand for settlement of various complaints in the sum of £1m.”
TCPA replied that it was not interested in a settlement and soon after turned down the grievance.
Mr Atkinson sent the all-staff email a week later. Judge Batten said: “The email is lengthy and couched in general terms about a number of complaints about the respondent, and about the claimant being treated in a way that he did not like and did not agree with.”
Mr Atkinson argued that this email was a protected disclosure, but the judge did not agree that there were more than reasonable prospects of persuading a tribunal of this.
The contents of the email “are about personal gain for the claimant – designed to put pressure on the respondent to settle and, as such, that a tribunal would be unlikely to conclude that it was the claimant’s reasonable belief that the matters raised were in the public interest.”
Even if it was a protection disclosure, the judge added, Mr Atkinson failed to show it was the reason or the principal reason for his dismissal.
TPCA’s case was that Mr Atkinson was dismissed for how he pursued his dispute with the company. After the email, it arranged an investigation, conducted by a third party, which led to a disciplinary hearing. Mr Atkinson failed to attend both the investigatory interview and the disciplinary hearing.
“[The dismissing officer] tendered cogent evidence of his view of a breakdown in trust and confidence as a result of the claimant’s various actions at the material time, both in sending the all-employees mail and also because of the content of a number of other emails to senior managers, sent by the claimant previously.”
Though Judge Batten accepted that the email may have had some influence on the dismissing officer, she concluded that TPCA had grounds for a dismissal for conduct, alternatively for some other substantial reason in law.
“Therefore, the claimant has not established that he has a pretty good chance of succeeding in his complaint of unfair dismissal pursuant to section 103A of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and certainly not to the degree of certainty required to succeed with an interim relief application.
“The application is therefore dismissed.”
It emerged in January [1] that the Financial Conduct Authority is investigating TCPA over its motor finance work but there is no suggestion this is connected to Mr Atkinson’s complaints.