Mr W Aitchison v Stevens Equipment Rental Limited — 2023

Mr Aitchison worked for Stevens Equipment Rental Limited as a dump truck driver. The tribunal found that his employment started on 01/03/2016, not an earlier date, and that he had been given and signed a contract of employment. It found the contract was in substance a zero-hours contract, with no obligation on the respondent to provide work and only limited guaranteed payments when not working.

The central dispute was whether the claimant was dismissed on 08/02/2023 or resigned later. The tribunal accepted that he was removed from the Uxbridge site on 08/02/2023 after issues involving PPE and attitude, but it found that PM did not say he was "laid off" or use unambiguous words amounting to dismissal. It relied in part on the contemporaneous "daily emails" showing PM continuing to treat the claimant as available for work and trying to place him after 08/02/2023, and it rejected the claimant's account on the key dismissal conversation.

The tribunal found that the claimant resigned when he chose to take a self-employed role through an umbrella company on 08/03/2023, and that the respondent had continued to treat him as employed until that point. On that basis, the unfair dismissal claim failed, the tribunal also found there was no redundancy dismissal, and the breach of contract / notice pay claim failed because the claimant had resigned. The holiday pay issue was recorded as settled because the respondent paid holiday pay on 24/03/2023 and the claimant accepted it. The claim for failure to provide written particulars under section 38 of the Employment Act 2002 was dismissed because the claimant had signed the contract and, in any event, the relevant provisions did not apply retrospectively to the 2016 contract.