The number of reports made through the county council's whistleblowing procedures almost doubled last year (2025/26), councillors have been told.

The procedure is designed to enable employees and others to confidentially raise concerns about misconduct, wrongdoing, financial irregularity or potentially unlawful actions.

And data presented to the council's audit committee on Thursday (October 1) reveals that 31 allegations were reported under the council's whistle-blowing procedures in the 2025/26 financial year.

That's almost double the 16 reports that were lodged in 2024/25. And significantly higher than the four recorded in 2023/24.

However, only three of those 31 allegations were reported to have fallen within the council's whistleblowing policy.

According to the report presented to the committee, the majority of reports lodged under the whistleblowing procedure – 19 – were employment-related, which could include disputes, workplace grievances, behaviour and bullying and harassment.

Four of the allegations related to the misuse of funds or assets or fraud category, while three related to the misuse of data or data access or acceptable IT use.

The remaining five allegations are reported to relate to safeguarding, bribery, school closure, tendering and commissioning practice and bullying (external).

Of the 19 employment-related reports, 15 were directed to human resources. But four related to external organisations and were referred to those organisations.

A further nine allegations were also determined to be outside of the scope of the whistle-blowing policy and were dealt with under separate policies or referred to external organisations.

Three allegations, according to the report, were considered as whistle-blowing under the council's policy and were reported to have been "investigated accordingly". All three were recorded as "not upheld".

Presenting the report, the head of assurance services, Chris Wood, said that the key thing that stood out in the report was that the number of whistleblowers had "nearly doubled" since last year.

He also noted that a "significant" proportion – 61% – had related to employment matters, compared to 44% the year before.

And as part of a response to a further question by Cllr Matthew Hurst, Mr Wood said that there had been a decline in referrals in the post-Covid years to 2023/24. But he said that the last two years had been "significantly higher".

And he said: "I think the number of referrals, though, can often reflect broader feelings in an organisation.

"Without talking about HCC specifically, a simple Copilot search will tell you that the number of HR-related or employment-related matters goes up in organisations that are undergoing significant transformation or change or are under particular pressures.

"And that would apply to any organisation, not specifically HCC. But it is interesting to note the types of things that do come to us."

The annual whistleblowing report was presented to councillors at a meeting of the county council's audit committee, on Friday (October 2). The webcast of the meeting can be viewed at www.hertfordshire.gov.uk