In person For the v Mr P Soni of the Redundancy Payments Service — 2024

This was a preliminary hearing to determine the claimant's employment status. The claimant, a 50% shareholder and director of J&B Disaster Management Limited (in administration), applied to the Redundancy Payments Service for redundancy pay, notice pay and holiday pay from the National Insurance Fund under sections 166 and 182 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The Secretary of State refused on the basis that the claimant was not an employee of the insolvent first respondent.

Applying section 230 ERA 1996 and the authorities including Neufeld, Eaton, Autoclenz and Ready Mixed Concrete, the judge found no written contract of employment, no board minute or written memorandum constituting an agreement to employ the claimant. The claimant's accounts of the contractual arrangement were inconsistent (initially a "verbal agreement", later an unprinted online contract), and the figures he gave for his wage were inconsistent with his originating application and his P60. Payments treated as salary were below the National Minimum Wage, which the tribunal accepted did not reflect the wage to which a bona fide employee would be entitled.

Applying the Autoclenz four-stage test, the tribunal found the claimant had not discharged the burden of proving a contract of employment; there was no irreducible minimum of mutuality of obligation, no requirement of personal service and insufficient control, given that he was a 50% shareholder in what was effectively a quasi-partnership and could not be obliged to act without his own consent. The tribunal therefore held the claimant was not an employee of the first respondent and dismissed his claims against the second respondent.