In person For the v Respondent — 2022

The tribunal found that the claimant was an employee from the start of the relationship in November 2020. It relied on the written offer of employment, the promised benefits, the employee handbook, the timesheets describing him as an employee, and the reality of the working arrangements. It rejected the respondent's case that a change to CIS/self-employed status had been agreed a few days after he started, finding there was no written document confirming any such change and that the claimant understood CIS only as a mechanism to get paid.

The tribunal held that the respondent committed multiple breaches of contract: it did not provide the promised pension and private medical insurance, did not provide paid annual leave as promised, denied sick pay before later paying it, failed to issue a contract of employment, and unilaterally treated the claimant as a contractor. Those matters were treated cumulatively as a repudiatory breach. The tribunal accepted that the claimant resigned on 1 April and 7 April 2021 because he had realised he was not being treated as an employee and was not going to receive the benefits he had been promised, so he was constructively dismissed.

The automatic unfair dismissal claims under section 100 and section 104 ERA 1996 were dismissed. On section 100, the tribunal found the claimant had not established that he raised significant health and safety concerns, refused work, left the workplace, or took protected steps within the statutory provisions. On section 104, it found that the February 2021 SSP/CIS correspondence was not an assertion of a relevant statutory right within section 104(4), and in any event there was no dismissal or detriment for that reason. The tribunal also said it could not conclude that any alleged health and safety concerns were the reason for dismissal.

The monetary awards were confined to contractual and wage claims. The tribunal awarded £454.34 for lost pension contributions, £267.55 for private medical insurance, £100.92 gross for unpaid overtime on 7 February 2021, and £1,696.21 gross for accrued but untaken annual leave under regulation 14 of the Working Time Regulations 1998. It recorded a total award of £2,519.02 gross and noted that the claimant had less than two years' service, so ordinary unfair dismissal was not available.