In the case of Dr Z Windle v West Yorkshire Police Dr Zuzana Windle is a professional interpreter and translator registered on the National Register of Public Service Interpreters (NRPSI). She provided services to West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire Police via the supplier which held the language services contract, which on 1 April 2019 changed to Capita.
On 29 March 2019 Zuzana emailed the West Yorkshire force to raise concerns about the use of unqualified interpreters and a few days later emailed again to raise a formal complaint and asked for an investigation, later alleging that Capita had supplied “unqualified bilinguals”, and gave a specific example involving a domestic assault.
A South Yorkshire police officer within the procurement team believed the example breached data protection regulations and could jeopardise the investigation and put people at risk. West Yorkshire police lawyers advised contacting NRPSI, who said its code of conduct had been breached. Follow-up emails between officers mentioned considering suspending Zuzana from police duties. In emails exchanged by officers at both forces, it was alleged that Zuzana was refusing to take jobs from Capita in order to secure a higher payment by being approached by the police directly.
The language services operational lead for West Yorkshire then investigated whether Zuzana was listed on the national vetting contract and found out that she did not have (Non Police Personnel Vetting) NPPV3 clearance. Zuzana was removed from future Capita bookings until she had the clearance, which came through in August 2019.
The judge said Zuzana’s case was that because she had raised complaints, the police reacted by digging into her vetting status and when they found a problem and were sure of their ground, then took steps to ensure that she stopped being given work.
The ET found that in five instances the conduct complained of did not entail Dr Windle being subjected to a detriment. In three, it did, but the conduct complained of was found not to have been on grounds of the protected disclosures. Dr Windle appealed.
The EAT upheld the appeal in part. The appeal succeeded in respect of three of the complaints, where the ET had failed to explain why the conduct was not regarded as amounting to detrimental treatment, and a further pair of complaints, where the ET had not addressed the core of Dr Windle’s case as to why the conduct was because of her protected disclosures. The decision in respect of the other complaints was Meek-compliant.
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