Ms J Williams v Sinclairslaw Limited — 2023

Ms J Williams, a family-law solicitor, joined Sinclairslaw Limited in 2010 on email terms describing her as self-employed, paid by a 37% share of fee income after an initial three months at £1,500 per month, with the firm able to recoup £4,500 after 12 months. She paid her own practising certificate and panel memberships at the start, dealt with her own tax and National Insurance, generated her own work, took holidays without approval, and was largely left to conduct her own practice. Applying the Ready Mixed Concrete and Nethermere approach, the tribunal found the relationship lacked the necessary mutuality of obligation and material control for a contract of employment under the ERA.

On that basis, the tribunal held that Ms Williams was not an employee for ERA purposes and dismissed the unfair dismissal claim. It accepted that personal service was neutral, but found there was no sufficient control over how, when or where she worked and no obligation on the Respondent to provide work or on her to accept it. The judgment records that the parties’ arrangement remained one of self-employment throughout the relationship.

For Equality Act purposes, the tribunal reached the opposite conclusion. Applying section 83 EqA and the client-or-customer authorities, it found that Ms Williams had been recruited to work for the firm as an integral part of its operations, did not actively market her services to the world at large, and had no outside work or substitute. She was therefore in employment for EqA purposes, so the age and sex discrimination claims were capable of proceeding in principle.

The limitation decision disposed of most of the pleaded discrimination allegations. Using section 123 EqA, Hendricks, King, Robertson, Keeble and Adedeji, the tribunal held that allegations 1 to 8 in the Further and Better Particulars were out of time, did not amount to a continuing act, and should not be allowed to proceed on just and equitable grounds. Only allegation 9, concerning the unanswered 23 March 2022 email seeking confirmation of employment status and a copy of contract/terms documentation, remained in time; the age and sex discrimination claims were therefore left live only on that issue. The separate amendment application, which sought to add two late allegations from November 2019 and June 2021, was refused under Selkent and Vaughan because it was substantially out of time and would have faced the same limitation difficulty.