Who can report a whistleblowing concern?
The Whistleblowing Policy applies to all workers within the meaning of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and the Employment Rights Act 1996, including employees and workers, persons contracted to personally provide services to the Council, persons undergoing training or work experience as part of a training course, and agency workers (referred to as "colleagues").
The Whistleblowing Policy also applies to elected members should they wish to raise a whistleblowing concern. If a disclosure is received about an elected member, it would ordinarily be passed to the Ethical Standards Commissioner to consider and investigate as appropriate.
If a concern or circumstances do not fall under the scope of the Whistleblowing Policy (e.g. a whistleblower is a member of the public or a disclosure is about a service provided by another organisation separate to the Council) then we would still encourage reporting concern(s), but this should be through the most appropriate alternative channel.
Mechanisms for raising other concerns include the Council’s Complaints Process, the Fraud Reporting Portal on the Council’s website, direct reports to Internal Audit via email on InternalAudit@edinburgh.gov.uk and direct reports to Human Resources.