Mr B Knezevic, Solicitor For the v Respondent — 2022

The tribunal decided preliminary issues of employment status and continuous service. It found that the claimant was a worker throughout, but that she was an employee of the respondent only from 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019. The 2018 agreement was treated as a consultancy arrangement on a pilot project: the claimant worked on a task-based basis, had no fixed hours, used her personal email address, and the tribunal found that relationship was not one of service.

The tribunal accepted that the relationship had changed by 2019. The 2019 agreement referred to the claimant as an employee, required compliance with the respondent's policies and procedures, and the claimant worked full time, used a respondent email address, took part in weekly meetings, managed researchers, represented the respondent externally, and was evaluated in employee-style terms. On that basis, applying mutuality of obligation, control and personal performance, the tribunal found employee status during 2019.

The tribunal rejected the argument that there was continuous employment through the end of the 2018 contract or into 2020. It found the gap after 31 August 2018 was not a temporary cessation of work and there was no umbrella contract. For 2020, the parties were negotiating a contract with RouaT Ltd, and the tribunal held that the claimant could not also be an employee of the respondent in respect of the same work while employed by her company, referring to Patel v Specsavers Optical Group Ltd. The result was that the claimant's unfair dismissal and breach of contract claims were dismissed, and only the race discrimination and victimisation claims were allowed to continue.