Mrs Jessica Mauve v Plinian Capital Ltd — 2025

Mrs Jessica Mauve was engaged from May 2013 to provide project management services in circumstances where invoices were submitted through her company, Mentallogenic Mining Ltd (MML), at an initial rate of £5,000 per month. The tribunal found that there was no signed employment contract and that the written drafts prepared in 2013, 2018 and 2019 were never agreed. It accepted that the arrangement began as a self-employed consultancy arrangement and that, over time, the parties continued to work on that basis.

Applying the section 230 ERA 1996 definitions and the usual multi-factor authorities, the tribunal found that the claimant was not an employee. It attached weight to the fact that she was paid through MML, submitted her own tax returns, used her own equipment, could manage her time and holidays subject to notifying Mr Mills, and was not shown to have a contractual right to insist on employee status. It also noted that when the respondent reduced the work to half-time in February 2021, and later stopped paying, the claimant's correspondence was framed in business-to-business terms, including references to debt, payment plans and interest.

The tribunal did not treat references in documents to salaries, partners or National Insurance as conclusive. It found those terms were used loosely and were not enough to displace the underlying consultancy structure. On that basis, the tribunal held that it had no jurisdiction to determine the unfair dismissal, statutory redundancy payment and breach of contract complaints, and those complaints were dismissed.

The tribunal did find that the claimant was a worker. It held that she undertook to perform the work personally, there was no right of substitution, and the respondent was not in reality her client or customer. It therefore found jurisdiction to hear the complaints of unauthorised deductions from wages and entitlement to payment in respect of annual leave. No final decision was made on the merits of those claims, and no remedy was assessed at this preliminary hearing.