Report of a survey on whistleblowing procedures in UK universities

This survey is a follow-up to a postal survey of 87 English universities conducted by researchers at Middlesex University in 2000. The total number of questionnaires returned in the earlier research was 51, yielding a response rate of 59%. 92% said that they had a whistleblowing procedure, although 57% of these had been in operation for less than 12 months. Significantly, 89% per cent of respondents who had a procedure indicated that it had never been used and the remainder stated that it had been invoked on less than five occasions. The previous study was conducted relatively soon after the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 came into force in July 1999. We decided to revisit the university sector at the end of 2013 in order to assess the impact of subsequent developments in the case law, recent amendments to the legislation and the publication of good practice guidelines. In particular, we were interested to discover if the scope of whistleblowing policies/procedures had been extended, whether duties to report were being imposed, whether ‘hotlines’ and ‘helplines’ were now commonplace and if arrangements reflected the recent emphasis on public interest rather than good faith disclosures.