A Croydon Whistleblower Said His Pay Slip Proved the Council Was Being Defrauded. Seven Years Later, the Tribunal That Heard the Evidence Found None.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. Daniel Cox, a SEND support worker supplied to Croydon Council through the staffing agency Adecco and its subsidiary Giant Professional, alleged in July 2018 that the gap between his pay and what the council was billed meant the companies were defrauding it [1]. By 2021, on the Employment Appeal Tribunal's own account, Cox was "no longer pursuing" the fraud allegation as part of his legal case [2]. A ten-day Employment Tribunal hearing in late 2024 heard evidence on what remained of his belief anyway, and its corrected judgment, sent to the parties in January 2025, found "no evidence whatsoever" to support it, dismissing every one of Cox's claims [4]. Cox has since appealed again. An Employment Appeal Tribunal cause list confirms a hearing on his renewed appeal took place on 7 October 2026 [5], and recent local reporting of the case has revived the fraud framing without reference to the 2025 findings [6] [7].
Daniel Cox started work for Croydon Council in October 2017, supplied through the agency Adecco and its subsidiary Giant Professional, eventually working as an Education, Health and Care Plan co-ordinator in the council's SEND service [4]. He was paid at an hourly rate. The council, under its contract with the agency, was billed a daily rate shown on his paperwork as "<£350 per day", a "<" sign the tribunal later found means "less than" [4]. Cox read the gap between the two figures differently: in a letter to Adecco on 5 July 2018, he alleged breaches of data protection law, that unqualified staff were being placed in his role, and that Giant was overcharging the council for his work while not passing the difference on to him, a contention his own pleadings characterised as fraud [1]. His assignment was terminated on 8 July 2018, three days later, and he brought an Employment Tribunal claim the following month alleging he had been subjected to detriment for making protected disclosures, that is, as a whistleblower [1].
Struck out, reinstated, narrowed
The case has been in the tribunal system, one way or another, ever since. At a preliminary hearing on 12 July 2019, Employment Judge Martin struck out Cox's claims against Adecco and Croydon Council, ruling that he had not made a protected disclosure [1]. Cox, representing himself, appealed. On 9 April 2021 His Honour Judge Tayler at the Employment Appeal Tribunal allowed that appeal, finding the original tribunal's reasoning hard to follow and ordering the claim reinstated for a fresh hearing [2].
It is this 2021 judgment that current coverage of the case points to when it describes a judge "mentioning the possibility of fraud" [6]. The judgment itself is more specific than that framing suggests. Describing Cox's pleaded case, Judge Tayler recorded that "fraud was the core contention" of the original 2018 letter, but added, in the same judgment, that it was "an allegation that is now not pursued", because "the claimant no longer relies on the contention that his disclosures tended to show fraud" [2]. By the time Cox won his reinstatement, in other words, fraud was no longer part of what he was legally alleging; the live issues narrowed to data protection and the placement of unqualified staff [2]. A second appeal followed over which further amendments to his claim should be allowed; the Employment Appeal Tribunal, under Mrs Justice Eady, allowed that appeal in part on 30 August 2023, permitting two of six proposed amendments [3].
The hearing that actually tested it
The substantive hearing finally took place over ten days, 28 October to 10 November 2024, before Employment Judge Rice-Birchall sitting with two lay members [4]. Although fraud was no longer a legal basis for Cox's claim, the tribunal's account of the evidence records that he continued, in person, to maintain his belief that Giant had been fraudulently overcharging the council. The tribunal's assessment of that belief, as set out in its findings, was blunt:
What the tribunal found. "The claimant was saying certain things in order to make his case add up, despite them being implausible... he... appeared to maintain that he believed that R1 was somehow fraudulently charging R3 £350 per day for his services, despite no evidence whatsoever to support that contention, in particular when everywhere the £350 rate was mentioned it was prefaced by a '<' sign which means 'less than' though the claimant professed that he did not know that meaning of the sign despite it being clearly explained to the claimant in meetings" [4].
The tribunal went further, finding that Cox's insistence on the fraud allegation, after colleagues had initially been sympathetic to him over a genuine pay underpayment, was what turned opinion against him within the agency, and that it was his own refusal to accept a corrected, lower-rate assignment, not any protected disclosure, that led to his assignment being terminated [4]. Every complaint Cox brought, whistleblowing detriment, breach of contract over notice pay, and holiday pay, was dismissed [4]. The judgment was corrected and sent to the parties on 29 January 2025 [4].
An eighth year, and a revived fraud framing
That was not the end of it. Cox has appealed again, this time against the January 2025 dismissal. The Employment Appeal Tribunal's own cause list for the week of 5 October 2026 lists "EA-2025-000172-PS Mr Daniel Cox v (1) Adecco UK Ltd (2) Giant Professional Ltd (3) London Borough of Croydon" for 7 October 2026, before His Honour Judge Feeny, marked as a "Rule 3(10) Application" with Cox appearing in person [5]. A Rule 3(10) hearing is the oral renewal available to an appellant whose appeal has already been rejected on the papers as disclosing no reasonable prospect of success, a further procedural hurdle before any fresh merits hearing could happen at all.
It is against that backdrop that the case has returned to local coverage. Inside Croydon reported on 6 October 2026 that the council has spent close to £150,000 on external lawyers contesting Cox's case since 2018, framing the dispute as an unresolved eight-year fight over an unqualified worker's agency billing [6]. A follow-up on 9 October 2026 reported that a Green Party councillor, Paul Ainscough, had called for the council's external auditors to investigate "all related contracts, paperwork and financial records" over possible fraud, citing the 2021 Tayler judgment's description of the claimant's pleaded case [7]. Neither article refers to the 2025 corrected judgment, the tribunal's explicit rejection of the fraud belief for lack of evidence, or the fact that the fraud allegation had already been dropped from Cox's pleaded case back in 2021.
What is not established here
None of this means Croydon Council's use of agency staffing is beyond scrutiny, or that Cox's other, narrower complaints, about data protection and the placement of unqualified agency staff, were found to be baseless; the January 2025 judgment addresses each in detail and this account does not attempt to summarise all of it. Inside Croydon's reporting states Croydon Council has spent almost £150,000 opposing Cox's case; this site was not able to verify that figure against a council document, an FOI response, or any other primary source, and does not repeat it as established fact here. What the documentary record does establish is narrower and more specific: the fraud allegation driving the renewed coverage of this case was abandoned as a legal contention in 2021, and tested anyway as a matter of fact in 2024, where a tribunal that heard ten days of evidence found nothing to support it.
Sources
- Employment Tribunal, Mr D Cox v (1) Adecco Group UK and Ireland (2) Giant Professional Ltd (3) Croydon Council, Case No. 2303033/2018, preliminary hearing judgment, Employment Judge Martin, 12 July 2019. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d5fd7b6ed915d53ac85a029/Mr_D_Cox_v__1_Adecco_Group_UK_and_Ireland__2_Giant_Professional_Ltd__3_Croydon_Council_-_2303033_2018_Dimissal_Judgment.pdf
- Employment Appeal Tribunal, Mr Daniel Cox v Adecco and Others, UKEAT/0339/19/AT (V), Judge Tayler, 9 April 2021. https://www.gov.uk/employment-appeal-tribunal-decisions/mr-daniel-cox-v-adecco-and-others-ukeat-slash-0339-slash-19-slash-at-v
- Employment Appeal Tribunal, Cox v Adecco UK Ltd & Ors, [2023] EAT 105, Mrs Justice Eady, 30 August 2023. https://www.gov.uk/employment-appeal-tribunal-decisions/mr-d-cox-v-1-adecco-uk-ltd-2-giant-professional-ltd-3-london-borough-of-croydon-2023-eat-105
- Employment Tribunal, Mr Daniel Cox v (1) Adecco UK Ltd (2) Giant Professional Ltd (3) London Borough of Croydon, Case No. 2303033/2018, corrected judgment with reasons, Employment Judge Rice-Birchall, sent to the parties 29 January 2025. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/684061938dd459f8c947b42f/Mr_Daniel_Cox_v_1._Adecco_UK_ltd_2._Giant_Professional_Ltd_3._London_Borough_of_Croydon_2303033-2018_Corrected_Judgment.pdf
- Employment Appeal Tribunal, Second Revised Cause List, week commencing 5 October 2026. https://employmentappeals.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/public/Upload/SecondRevisedEATCauseListWeekCommencing05thOctober2026..pdf
- Inside Croydon, "Whistleblower's lonely eight-year battle over council spending", 6 October 2026. https://insidecroydon.com/2026/10/06/whistleblowers-lonely-eight-year-battle-over-council-spending/
- Inside Croydon, "Greens call for audit investigation into possible fraud at council", 9 October 2026. https://insidecroydon.com/2026/10/09/greens-call-for-audit-investigation-into-possible-fraud-at-council/