Two porters who won an employment tribunal against the Countess of Chester Hospital Trust said their victory shows whistleblowers are "still penalised".
Last month, the trust said its culture had "improved" after the Thirlwall Inquiry found former bosses had "intended to punish" doctors who raised concerns about nurse Lucy Letby.
A tribunal this year found porters John Crayton and Thomas Jones had been "inappropriately interrogated" after raising concerns about the way deceased patients were transported. The pair said the ruling showed they had been "unlawfully victimised".
The trust said it accepted the tribunal's findings but "encourages all colleagues to speak up".
The porters raised concerns in 2024 that they were having to transport "exposed" bodies that were not in body bags, which they said posed an infection risk.
They said there was no protection for their forearms because of the trust's policy that staff had to be bare below the elbows.
Crayton claimed there was a risk of "psychological damage" from transporting bodies showing "signs of a traumatic death".
The tribunal in Manchester found the pair had been "inappropriately interrogated" by their line manager after a senior mortuary worker identified them as the possible authors of a whistleblowing complaint submitted anonymously through the trust's Freedom to Speak Up policy.
It heard their line manager questioned them and other porters in an attempt to "get to the bottom of who had broken the chain of command".
Source: BBC News, 1 October 2026
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