Employment Edit: 23 October 2025

Legal Updates

Whistleblowing

The EAT has held that a dismissing manager cannot be liable for a whistleblowing detriment claim where they were not personally motivated by the whistleblowing disclosures.

Over a period of two years, the claimant made several disclosures about staffing issues to the respondent employer. The claimant’s line manager (manager A) later instigated an investigation into conduct allegations against the claimant. An investigation and disciplinary process then followed, at the end of which the claimant was dismissed by another manager (manager B). The decision to dismiss was taken solely by manager B, who was not aware of the claimant’s history of disclosures about staffing issues. As well as a claim of whistleblowing dismissal against the employer, the claimant brought whistleblowing detriment claims against the employer and both individual managers.

When considering the detriment claims against the individual managers, the Tribunal found that manager A had been a “key influence” on manager B and had been a material influence on the decision to dismiss. It concluded, however, that manager A could not be personally liable for detriment as he had not taken the decision to dismiss. On the other hand, the Tribunal held that manager B was personally liable for the detriment of dismissal as, in the Tribunal’s view, the motives of manager A could be attributed to manager B.

The EAT overturned this on appeal, dismissing the claim against manager B. The EAT noted that it cannot have been the intention of Parliament to impose unlimited personal liability on innocent individuals who have not personally been motivated by the whistleblowing disclosures. This judgment is welcome news for managers and decision-makers in disciplinary processes and any other process which might result in dismissal.

(Henderson v GCRM Ltd & others)

Data subject access requests

Responding to data subject access requests (DSARs) can be a time-consuming task for employers. It is for that reason that employers will be pleased to learn that the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 introduced some welcome clarifications regarding the timeframes for responding to DSARs and the scope of the search required. These changes provide greater certainty for employers and help reduce some of the administrative burden associated with complex or high-volume requests.

In this blog post, Ellen Goodland sets out a summary of the key reforms relating to DSARs and shares some practical steps for HR and legal teams to consider when navigating DSARs raised by the workforce.

Changes to the Immigration Rules

Last week, the Home Office published a Statement of Changes setting out various important amendments to the Immigration Rules. These amendments include:

• A significant reform to the Graduate visa route, with the length of visas granted under this route shortened from 24 to 18 months for new, non-PHD applicants who apply on or after 1 January 2027. PhD graduates will retain the ability to hold a three-year Graduate visa, regardless of whether their application pre-dates or post-dates 1 January 2027.
• A new cap on the number of visas that can be granted under the High Potential Individual route – this cap being set at 8,000 visas a year initially. Eligibility for this route is simultaneously being extended, as the number of recognised universities under it will double from November 2025. It remains to be seen how much the introduction of a cap and the broadening of eligible universities will impact on demand for, and availability of, these visas.
• From 8 January 2026, applicants for Skilled Worker visas and some other routes will have to demonstrate a higher standard of English language knowledge. At the moment, this higher standard is set to apply to first time main applicants only and not to individuals extending their visas in the UK or to their dependents.

The government has also published draft regulations which, if approved by Parliament, will see an increase to the immigration skills charge (ISC) from 16 December 2025. The ISC for the first 12 months of employment is set to increase to £1,320 for medium and large sponsors (up from £1,000). Sponsors may want to consider assigning Certificates of Sponsorship (where appropriate) before this time to benefit from the current ISC rates.

Workplace investigations

With workplace investigations becoming a regular feature for many employers, our investigations team, led by Katie Russell, wrote a series of articles for the HR publication, People Management, where we shared practical advice, based on our experience, on how to approach each stage of an investigation.

From planning and scoping your investigation and gathering evidence through to reaching conclusions and writing the report, our series, which you can access below, takes you through the investigation process step by step.

If you need advisory support on any workplace investigation including investigations involving complex issues such as sexual harassment, whistleblowing, or regulatory compliance, our experienced team would be happy to help. We understand that investigations can be highly sensitive and will handle issues with care, respect and discretion. In addition to advisory support, we also offer independent investigations as a dedicated service line if you need to appoint an impartial, third-party investigator. Learn more about the experience of our team below.

Thought-leadership, themes and trends

Sexual harassment prevention

The duty for employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers came into force just under a year ago, on 26 October 2024. However, according to research by WorkNest (which surveyed over 400 HR professionals), four in ten businesses have not yet carried out a sexual harassment risk assessment and over half of businesses (54%) are concerned that they have not done enough to comply with their legal duty to prevent sexual harassment.

With the duty due to be extended next year to require employers to take “all” reasonable steps, it is crucial that organisations proactively measure the success (or otherwise) of the steps that they put in place to comply with the duty and review and refresh risk assessments. In this blog post, Pip Galland recaps on the duty and considers whether there is more that organisations should be doing to comply.