WHISTLEBLOWING

When an individual raises a concern about malpractice or wrongdoing within an organisation.

If you have reason to believe that one or more of the following circumstances applies:

• Criminal activity including fraud or theft                          
• Breaches of internal policies and procedures
• Breaches of regulatory or legal obligation (e.g. data protection law, competition law)
• Bribery or corruption (e.g. accepting incentives in return for giving business, or receiving benefit)
• A miscarriage of justice
• Damage to the environment
• Danger to health and safety of any individual
• Unauthorised disclosure of confidential information
• Negligence
• The deliberate concealment of any of the above matters
• Behaviour that can or could harm reputation or financial well-being of the Society such as concerns over:
• Miss-selling
• Treating customers fairly
• Money laundering
• Fitness and propriety
• Systems and controls
• Unauthorised business

Our online whistleblowing submission form allows staff and external individuals (such as third party providers and members of the general public) to disclose information anonymously or confidentially.

The form allows you to choose whether to disclose your identity or not.  We hope that you will feel able to voice whistleblowing concerns openly but if you want to raise your concern confidentially, we will make every effort to keep your identity a secret, unless disclosure is required by law.

If you chose to disclose anonymously, proper investigation may be more difficult or impossible if we cannot obtain further information from you.  It is also difficult to establish whether allegations are credible. For this reason, it’s really important you include as much information as possible.

Please note that if you chose to make an anonymous disclosure, we will not be able to provide you with any feedback and any action to look into the disclosure could be limited as we won’t be able to ask for further information. 

You should also understand that making an anonymous disclosure means it can be more difficult to qualify for protections as a whistleblower. This is because there would be no documentary evidence linking the worker to the disclosure for the employment tribunal to consider.

If those raising a concern are external individuals (i.e. one of our customers or a member of the general public) they will probably not be eligible to the statutory whistleblowing protections. This is due to the fact that the law only extends the legal protections to ‘employees’ and ‘workers’, as well as an extended group of other individuals who also fall within the definition of ‘worker’. Nonetheless, the Society will attempt to protect anyone who reports a concern to us, if made reasonably and in good faith.