Interim Relief Application Dismissed by Employment Tribunal

OUTCOME: Dismissed

Case Number: 6009171/2026

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EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS

Claimant: [redacted]

Respondent: [redacted]

[COMPANY]

On:

23 April 2026

Before:

Employment Judge Suzanne Palmer

Representation

Claimant: [redacted] Respondent: [redacted]

JUDGMENT ON APPLICATION FOR INTERIM RELIEF

1. The Claimant’s application for interim relief is not upheld.

2. No order is made for reinstatement, re-engagement or continuation of the contract of employment.

REASONS

Introduction

1. This hearing was listed to determine the Claimant’s application for interim relief and, if appropriate, to order the claimant’s reinstatement or re-engagement or to grant a continuation of contract order pending the hearing of the complaint of unfair dismissal.

Case Number: 6009171/2026

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2. The Claimant commenced employment with the Respondent on 5 January 2026. He was dismissed on 11 March 2026. His substantive claim relates to a complaint that his dismissal was automatically unfair under Section 103A Employment Rights Act 1996, in that the reason or principal reason was that he had made protected disclosures.

3. The Respondent is a [COMPANY]. It had in place a digital platform under its “[NAME]” brand name which was used to deal with customer service requests by submitting electronic forms completed by the customer to a large language model system which would respond to the requests using Artificial Intelligence.

4. The Respondent planned to commercialise that digital customer service system and sell it to other businesses to use to engage with their own customers.

5. The Claimant was engaged in a senior role – Head of [NAME] – [NAME]. His responsibility was to lead the transformation of the [NAME], under the brand name “[NAME]” into a market-ready product.

Claims and Issues

6. The issues for me to determine at this hearing were:

12.1 Is it likely that on determining the Claimant’s complaint, the tribunal will find that the Claimant was unfairly dismissed for the purposes of Section 128?;

12.2 If so, what if any order should be made pending the Final Hearing (reinstatement, re-engagement, continuation of contract, or no order)?. Documents

7. The parties provided me with a number of documents.

7.1. The Claimant provided: 7.1.1. A skeleton argument drafted by Counsel (22 pages); 7.1.2. A witness statement from the Claimant (20 pages); 7.1.3. A bundle of additional evidence (306 pages).

7.2. The Respondent provided: 7.2.1. A skeleton argument drafted by [COUNSEL] (9 pages); 7.2.2. An ET3 and Grounds of Resistance (15 pages); 7.2.3. A pleadings bundle (53 pages); 7.2.4. A bundle of additional evidence (39 pages).

8. Both Counsel helpfully took me to the key documents they relied on in the course of making their oral submissions.

Case Number: 6009171/2026

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The Law

9. Section 128 ERA makes it clear that dismissal for the (principal) reason that the employee has made a protected disclosure will be regarded as automatically unfair.

10. I am mindful that the case law in relation to the interim relief provisions of the ERA, which have been helpfully summarised by both Counsel in their written submissions, make it clear that, for reasons of public policy, the bar is set comparatively high in the case of applications for interim relief.

11. The test is whether the automatically unfair dismissal claim has “a pretty good chance of success” at the eventual hearing ([NAME] v C Shippan Ltd [1978] ICR 1068). This is significantly higher than a “more likely than not” test. It means “something nearer to certainty than mere probability” (Ministry of Justice v Sarfaz [2011] IRLR 562).

12. The burden is on the applicant to establish that relatively high degree of likelihood. That test of “pretty good chance of success” applies to each matter or element which the Claimant would be required to establish in order to succeed with his claim of automatically unfair dismissal at the eventual hearing. In other words, I need to consider the “pretty good chance” threshold in relation to each of these issues under Sections 43A to H and Section 103A ERA:

12.1. Did the Claimant make a protected disclosure; 12.2. Was it a qualifying disclosure, in other words relating to one of the relevant potential categories of disclosure, and made in the public interest; 12.3. Was the disclosure of information which, in the reasonable belief of the Claimant, tended to show that the potential category was made out; 12.4. Was it made to the employer or other responsible person; 12.5. Was the (principal) reason for the Claimant’s dismissal the fact that he had made the disclosure.

13. I am also required to bear in mind that this is an emergency jurisdiction and I am not making findings of fact. I am expected to be careful to avoid making findings which might tie the hands of the tribunal ultimately charged with the final determination of the merits of this claim. My task is one of forming an overall impression of the Claimant’s likelihood of success in his claim of automatically unfair dismissal, based on the material which is before me at this stage.

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Summary of the key events and issues

14. It seems clear that the “[NAME]” software platform for which the Claimant was responsible was closely modelled on the existing platform operating on the Respondent’s “[NAME]” brand.

15. It appears that early on during his employment, as a result of his research in order to understand his role, the Claimant became concerned about the way in which personal data provided by customers on their customer service request forms was handled. He appears to have believed that the data, which was passed on to AI software which could be in another country or continent, was being passed on unredacted, and that this may have breached the data protection laws or related regulations applicable in various countries.

16. Although I appreciate that I have not had sight of the full documentation in this case, it appears from some of the documentation provided by the Claimant that he may have had conversations with colleagues (peers) or other employees within the [NAME] in order to try to understand the way the personal data was processed. He seems to have become concerned that the existing [NAME] model could be operating in breach of data protection rules and regulations, and that if this was translated without modification into the “[NAME]” model when it became operational, the Respondent and its customers would again be in breach of rules and regulations.

17. The Claimant approached his immediate superior, Mr [APPELLANT], with his concerns on 10 February 2026. The relevant parts of the conversation are at 03:15 to 06:36 of the transcript of their conversation. Essentially, the Claimant raised concerns that “we need to have a real hard look at what different legislation in different countries is saying with regards to where data needs to be stored. So for example in Brazil having now worked with [NAME] on this we’re pretty sure that chat logs should be stored in Brazil and they currently aren’t… there seems to be a pretty fundamental issue with the fact that we send PII to open AI within the support tickets… the reason this is important for [NAME] is because if … [NAME] became a separate entity tomorrow and the IP transferred over to [NAME], we would also almost certainly fall foul of safe harbour rules… potentially all of our data just could be taken by different authorities in different countries… we could just be turned off…”.

18. A week later, on 17 February 2026, the Claimant and Mr [APPELLANT] had a further conversation on the same topic with Mr [APPELLANT], the Chief Executive Officer. It appears that the Claimant had some suggestions about how the company might address the concerns he had, and he was asked to do some research and formulate his views for discussion.

19. Following this, the Claimant produced a lengthy document setting out his concerns and his proposals for resolution. It appears that this document was also sent to the Chief Technical Officer, Mr [NAME].

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20. It appears that Mr [NAME] received that document on around 20 February 2026 and was not impressed with what he saw. In a virtual chat between [NAME], [APPELLANT] and [APPELLANT] on 20 February, to which the Claimant was not party, Mr [APPELLANT] said “Like wtf is this shit? This guy is a fucking idiot… more complete bullshit about things he doesn’t understand at all. This is pure AI slop. I’d fire him from [NAME] as a whole. I have no patience for bullshitters…”. The three gentlemen discussed finding the Claimant a different role, with the intention that Mr [APPELLANT] would take over the Business Development side of [NAME] until a replacement was found. It appears from the documentation that at this stage Mr [APPELLANT] had never met the Claimant and was not clear what his job description was – he appears to have thought that the Claimant was in a purely sales role.

21. In a slightly more measured conversation with Mr [APPELLANT] on 23 February 2026, Mr [APPELLANT] expressed concerns that the Claimant’s proposed solution was not workable because it involved integration with a company who was a competitor. He expressed concerns that the Claimant’s updates come across as AI-generated, heavy on buzzwords but “shallow/vapid, demonstrating a lack of deeper thinking on the subject”.

22. He then says, and this is a paragraph on which the Claimant places significant reliance, “I also think you’re significantly over-focused on legal, compliance, and bureaucracy rather than getting customers onboard and getting the ARR number moving. You’re worried about things for a large enterprise company, not a startup. I’m not saying these things are not important, but they should not be our initial focus – way too much of your updates/plans are devoted to the minutiae of regulation and I’ve heard calls have also spent significant time on these issues rather than doing things that actually move the needle. We are at the “move fast and break things” part of the company’s lifecycle and need to act accordingly”.

23. There was then further discussion, during which the Claimant asked “Would you be available for a call later today as I would really like your guidance on where you think we can move faster so I can enact that as soon as possible. I appreciate I should have included you in these discussions from the start, that’s my error”. It appears from the discussion that the Claimant and Mr [APPELLANT] had differences of opinion on some matters, including on whether the [NAME] product was or was not yet a market-viable product (Mr [APPELLANT] considered that it was, whereas the Claimant appears to have thought that it required further development to address the issues he had identified).

24. Following the call with Mr [APPELLANT], Mr [APPELLANT] informed the Claimant that he was to be moved to try a role within the business’s casino sector, although it was recognised that the Claimant had no experience of that sector. On 11 March 2026 the Claimant’s employment was terminated with immediate effect, two months into his employment and during his probation period.

25. The Claimant, in his claim, is clear that he considers that the reason for his dismissal was because Mr [NAME] was unhappy that he had made

Case Number: 6009171/2026

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protected disclosures about what he believed to be breaches of data protection rules and regulations.

26. The Respondent’s position is that the reason for dismissal is that the Claimant had “consistently underperformed”, in particular citing his reliance on AI to generate documents, resulting in poor written communication, his lack of sector specific knowledge, and his inability to adapt to a start-up environment. The Respondent denies that the alleged protected disclosures were in fact protected disclosures, or that this was the reason for dismissal. It has provided a brief witness statement from Mr [APPELLANT] confirming this position.

27. The Claimant counters that no issue had been raised about his performance prior to him sending the document to Mr [NAME], and asserts that he received positive feedback from Mr [NAME] up to that point.

Conclusions

28. Both parties have sought to persuade me that the documentation, independent of any witness evidence which might be heard at the final hearing, points clearly and unequivocally in favour of their respective positions. The Claimant places heavy reliance on the paragraph of the chat with Mr [RESPONDENT] which I have quoted above. The Respondent places heavy reliance on the fact that Mr [APPELLANT] initial response to the Claimant’s document on 20 February 2026 corroborates the assertions made in the ET3 about concerns about the Claimant’s reliance on AI and inability to adapt to a start-up environment.

29. It does not appear to be in dispute in this case that the purported disclosures relate to the potential category of failure to comply with legal obligations (in relation to the processing of personal data in a range of jurisdictions) for the purposes of Section 43B(b). They are undoubtedly made to three senior employees of the Respondent, all in a superior position to the Claimant. The purported disclosures contain information purporting to explain the Claimant’s understanding that the way in which the Respondent’s [NAME] software has been capturing and sharing personal data breaches rules and regulations, and that if [NAME] were to operate as an unmodified copy of that software platform, it would fall foul of the same legislation. A disclosure of such information would appear to have public interest ramifications. On the limited material I have seen, I consider that the Claimant has a pretty good chance of establishing that the material is capable of amounting to a qualifying protected disclosure.

30. In terms of whether the Claimant had reasonable grounds to believe that the information tended to show a breach of relevant rules and regulations the position is less clear-cut. The Respondent’s submission is that there would need to be extensive cross-examination of the Claimant in that regard at a Final Hearing before a Tribunal could reach a definitive view, including exploring precisely which rules and regulations the Claimant considered were breached, and what steps he had taken to investigate the position before arriving at his belief. The Respondent’s position appears to be that

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as a matter of fact, it already had measures in place to satisfy the various regulatory requirements in relation to the processing of personal data.

31. Whilst I have some sympathy with that submission from the Respondent, I note that on the information currently available to me, the Claimant appears to have taken some steps to inform himself about how matters operated before he raised the matter with more senior people within the organisation. Perhaps of significance, I also note that when the Claimant first raised the matter with Mr [APPELLANT] and then with [NAME] and [NAME], they did not themselves provide any reassurance or seek to investigate the matter with Mr [NAME]. Instead, it appears that they took his concerns on board and invited him to research them further and reduce them to writing, presumably so that they could be raised with Mr [NAME] as CTO. It therefore appears that they may not have been aware of how regulatory compliance was being achieved with the company’s data collection either.

32. In the circumstances, I am just about persuaded that the Claimant has a pretty good chance of establishing that he had a reasonable belief that the information he provided tended to show a failure to comply with legal obligations.

33. The next issue, however, is more complex, namely whether or not the Claimant has a pretty good chance of establishing that the fact of his disclosures was the reason, or the principal reason, for his dismissal.

34. There appears to be a significant coincidence in timing, in that the dismissal came swiftly after the Claimant’s concerns were escalated to Mr [APPELLANT], and it appears that no issues had been raised with him about his performance prior to that time – if anything, the opposite appears to be true, based on the limited information before me. It is also of note that, although the dismissing officer was Mr [NAME], it seems from the available documentation that Mr [NAME] deferred to the decision of Mr [APPELLANT] in relation to the removal of the Claimant from his original post.

35. In addition, it appears from the chat transcript of 20 February 2026 that Mr [APPELLANT] was extremely, and outspokenly, irritated by the Claimant’s document, and immediately expressed a personal preference to dismiss him from the company altogether. I also note that the Claimant’s offer to have a conversation about where he should focus his efforts in future appears not to sit entirely comfortably with the Respondent’s assertion today that the Claimant was dismissed because he was refusing to perform the job he was supposed to do.

36. However, I take the Respondent’s point that although all this may provide ample material for cross-examination of the Respondent’s witnesses at a final hearing, the critical factor for the Tribunal in due course will be to consider what was in the mind of the person or people taking the decision to dismiss. That cannot be identified from the papers alone, and context may be critical.

37. I note that the paragraph which the Claimant relies on as an apparent “smoking gun” has been taken somewhat out of context. It is fair to point

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out, as the Respondent does, that Mr [APPELLANT] referred in critical terms to both the Claimant’s communication style, and his failure to undertake the sales role Mr [NAME] appears to have considered he should have been doing, before he made any reference to the Claimant’s expressed concerns about regulation. If, as the Respondent asserts, there were suitable compliance measures already in place, it could potentially be more understandable for Mr [APPELLANT] to express frustration that the Claimant was taking time raising matters he knew nothing about.

38. As the Respondent reminds me, this case is about a Section 103A dismissal, not a Section 98 dismissal. The focus of the Tribunal in due course will be on the conscious or subconscious motivation of the decision- maker. Bearing in mind the high threshold, whilst I can say that the Claimant has reasonable prospects of success, there is insufficient material for me to say that he is likely to succeed – that he has “pretty good prospects” of showing that the alleged disclosure was the reason for the dismissal. That will be a question for the Tribunal considering the matter at a final hearing.

39. I should note that I have not made any findings of fact and nothing in these reasons should be seen as in any way tying the hands of the Tribunal at the Final Hearing.

40. As I said earlier in relation to my discussion of the law, any final determination of the reason, or principal reason, for the dismissal will lie with the Tribunal at the Final Hearing and is not for me to resolve. The Tribunal which hears the claim will have the benefit of hearing cross-examination of the dismissing officer and considering all the evidence before considering whether or not it accepts the Respondent’s assertions about the reasons for the dismissal.

41. I have to look at the material currently before me and form an impression of whether it appears to me that the Claimant has, or does not have, a “pretty good chance of success” in establishing that the (principal) reason for the dismissal was in fact his alleged protected disclosures, so as to bring himself within the sphere of protection of Section 103A ERA.

42. I do not consider that the information before me is capable of being conclusive as to that matter. I do not consider that the matters highlighted by the Claimant reach the relatively high bar of showing that he has a “pretty good chance” of succeeding in establishing at the Final Hearing that the actual, or principal, reason for his dismissal was his disclosures, rather than the reasons put forward by the Respondent.

43. I consider that there does appear to be some cogent evidence, at this preliminary stage and for today’s purposes, capable of supporting the purported reasons for the dismissal advanced by the Respondent.

44. That is not to say that the Claimant may not ultimately succeed in establishing his case on the balance of probabilities before the Tribunal at the Final Hearing in due course. However in my judgment he does not get over the higher threshold which applies when considering an application for interim relief.

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45. It therefore does not appear to me to be likely that on determining this claim, the tribunal will find at the Final Hearing that the Claimant has been unfairly dismissed by virtue of Section 103A ERA 1996.

46. It follows from that decision that it is not appropriate for me to proceed to consider the question of what if any interim relief should be ordered in this case. Accordingly I dismiss the Claimant’s application and make no order for interim relief.

47. Full written reasons for my decision have been provided to the parties on the request of the [NAME] following my delivery of oral reasons.

_____________________________________

Employment Judge Suzanne Palmer

Dated: 23 April 2026