Constructive dismissal and whistleblowing

[anonymous1975]

My wife left her place of work (doctors surgery) after there was an incident of cross contamination that was not dealt with property ( a blood sample was left on a surface and not cleaned, it as left to see if it was noticed) her last day of work was 25.01.23, since she left we have been in dialogue with her former employer but my wife suffered mentally and almost suffered a breakdown because of her treatment, she was put on higher doses of anti anxiety medication and she also lost her father during this time. Her former employer responded to us via a HR company and really really delayed every response to our requests, we now feel as though this was deliberate. When i submitted a DSAR they were slow, and asked us to fill in their template for information, when the DSAR was finally received (there was numerous occasions that they said it was sent yet it was not visible on the email) it was incomplete, i let them know that it was incomplete and since then they have ignored us, i gave them another chance last week to respond or we would go down the constructive dismissal and whistleblowing route, again they ignored us. Now i know that generally there is a three month time limit for this, but from what i know it can be extended for certain circumstances, we have remained in contact with them the entire time and the request was not fulfilled, the DSAR we needed to take to court but it was incomplete for the reasons stated. Would ACAS still accept the claim ? we have filed our intent on their website as we had enough of their game playing, and because my wife's' mental state was worse than mine i have had to do the work required. The whistleblowing is on a serious incident, all my wife is wanting is the salaries that she should have had when she left as she was alienated (and we have strong proof of this, and proof of the practise lying.....100% irrefutable proof). Please can anyone help ere, my just wants what is rightfully hers, we really struggled over Christmas when this happened.

[ULA]

If an employment tribunal does not receive a claim within the relevant time limit, this effectively means that the tribunal has no jurisdiction to hear the claim. However, the tribunal may extend time to submit claims where it finds that it was:

1. Not reasonably practicable for the claimant to present the claim in time, AND
2. the claim was presented within such further period as the tribunal considers reasonable.

Tribunal deadlines are a serious matter and if they do decide to extend beyond the relevant time it will only be very slightly flexible in missing the date and only if there are truly exceptional circumstances.

By all means start a claim via ACAS Early Conciliation and see if you the claim is approved by the Tribunal, even though it is out of time.

[anonymous1975]

Thank you for your response i do appreciate it, i was not aware of any time deadlines, and i was trying to be amicable, they took a long time to respond to my requests and they were never complete, so it wasn't until they completely ignored me that i had to make raise this with ACAS , my wife was not really able to make any decisions as she almost had a nervous breakdown, this was all recorded by her GP, hopefully this will go some way to helping.

[ULA]

Unfortunately I cannot say whether or not your reasons for missing the deadline will be accepted by the Tribunal given they are strict about timescales.

If you have any questions about this matter then please just come back to this thread.