The claimant in the employment tribunal brings complaints including that she was subjected to detrimental treatment on grounds of having made protected disclosures and unfairly dismissed for the sole or principal reason of having made protected disclosures.

A draft list of issues identified a number of claimed protected disclosures on which the claimant relied (and the factual and legal issues between the parties relating to them). The claimant maintained that this list wrongly omitted a further set of claimed protected disclosures which were covered by her original particulars of claim. The tribunal determined that these further claimed disclosures were not covered by the original particulars of claim, and so the claimant required permission to amend, which the tribunal refused.

The tribunal erred in determining that the claimed protected disclosures in question were not sufficiently raised by the original particulars of claim, and so erred by effectively striking out that part of the claimant’s case. On fair consideration of the particulars of claim as a whole, the claimed disclosures were sufficiently raised. While in their original form they required further particulars, some further particulars had been given by the time of the tribunal’s decision. Permission to amend was not required. The EAT accordingly directed that the claimed protected disclosures in question, and the factual and legal issues relating to them, be added to the list of issues for trial.

[Summary reproduced from the judgment]