Home / Cresswell v High Speed Two (HS2) Limited and others
30th June 2025
Tyler Ross, Trainee Solicitor
A former HS2 employee has been awarded over £300,000 after HS2 accepted that he was not given an appropriate level of protection as a whistleblower after his contract ended.
Whistleblowing is the act someone takes to report wrongdoing at work that affects others, commonly known as “blowing the whistle”. Legally, this act is known as making a ‘protected disclosure’ which must also be something which the employee reasonably believes is in the public interest. This can include information on criminal offences and breaches of legal obligations, or the deliberate concealment of any such information.
Whistleblowing legislation not only protects employees from suffering a detriment as a result of making a protected disclosure, it also protects workers, agency staff, and apprentices. A detriment means being treated worse as a result of the disclosure.
In addition, dismissing someone for whistleblowing is an automatically unfair reason for dismissal, which means employees, workers and agency staff are protected regardless of their length of employment. Whistleblowing claims do not have a cap on compensation, meaning employers can face large penalties for non-compliance.
In this particular case, Mr Cresswell, a consultant on the project, was deemed to have made protected disclosures on 5 separate occasions between November 2021 and September 2022. He raised concerns to senior members of the state-owned employer in charge of HS2 that his bosses were actively misrepresenting the costs of the project in order to secure further funding.
After accusing his employers of fraud, Mr Cresswell was subsequently overlooked for two Risk Consultancy vacancies. His engagement was then terminated in September 2022.
The Tribunal heard that Mr Cresswell was treated this way after making the accusation of fraud and was therefore deemed to have suffered detriment because he blew the whistle. Although HS2 denied the complaints were true, they admitted that his engagement was ended due to the complaints. As such, even though they denied the complaints, because Mr Creswell has a reasonable belief in his complaints, and that they met the threshold as a qualifying disclosure, he was protected by whistleblowing legislation. HS2 accepted that Mr Creswell was not given the appropriate level of protection when he raised his complaints.
This was an extremely expensive mistake to make, as the employer was ordered by the Tribunal to pay Mr Cresswell the sum of £319,070, mostly due to loss of earnings; highlighting the significant consequences that failing to effectively deal with an employee’s concerns can have.
We can assist your business to make sure it has effective whistleblowing measures in place should an employee make a protected disclosure. We can also assist if your business is the subject of a whistleblowing claim. Please contact our employment team on 0161 832 3434 for more information.
Alternatively, if you are an employee who has been subject to detriment as a result of blowing the whistle, please get in touch to see how we can assist.