Case 2201898/2024 · Employment Tribunal
Mrs S Bantel v Hoxleigh Limited (in liquidation) — 2024
- Case reference
- 2201898/2024
- Decision date
- 18 July 2024
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Anthony REPRESENTATION
- Venue
- London Central
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Mrs S Bantel
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningThe claimant brought claims for breach of contract in relation to wages and unauthorised deduction from wages. The respondent did not attend, and the claimant gave evidence with documents including the ET1, employee information, an unsigned contract, WhatsApp messages, bank statements, and bank screenshots.
The tribunal found that the claimant's asserted employment relationship ended on 6 October 2023 and that she began self-employed consultancy work on 7 October 2023. It placed little weight on employee information drafted by the claimant and found that the evidence did not show a contract of service, an obligation to work personally for pay, sufficient control by the respondent, or other factors consistent with employee status.
For the wages claim, the tribunal found that the claimant was neither a limb (a) nor limb (b) worker. It concluded that there was no contract requiring personal service for the respondent and that the facts indicated an investment or financial stake in the respondent's business. The breach of contract claim was dismissed, and the unauthorised deduction from wages claim was dismissed as not well founded.
Claims and outcomes
2 findings recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breach of contract | The judgment states that the breach of contract claim fails and is dismissed. The provided prompt text is truncated in the findings, but the visible reasons state that the claimant failed to prove a contract of employment or employee status. | Dismissed | — | — |
| Unlawful deduction from wages | The judgment states that the unauthorised deduction from wages claim was not well founded and is dismissed. The tribunal found the claimant was not a worker, so it did not need to decide whether the claim was in respect of wages or whether deductions were made. | Dismissed | — | — |
Legal tests applied
12 references- Article 7 Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) Order 1994
- section 23(2)(a) Employment Rights Act 1996
- not reasonably practicable
- Lowri Beck Services Ltd v Brophy
- Marley (UK) Ltd v Anderson
- Howlett Marine Services Ltd v Bowlam
- section 230(1) Employment Rights Act 1996
- section 230(2) Employment Rights Act 1996
- section 230(3) Employment Rights Act 1996
- Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher and Others
- Ready Mixed Concrete (SE) Ltd v Minister of Pensions and National Insurance
- Bates van Winkelhof v Clyde & Co LLP
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.
Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
How we got this data
Case essentials (reference, date, judge, venue, country, claim categories) are extracted from the structured metadata gov.uk publishes alongside each decision. Parties and monetary figures are extracted from the judgment PDF text. Key findings and per-claim outcomes require a second extraction pass that is not yet complete for this case — until then, the primary source linked above is the authoritative record. See full methodology.
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