Ms Gabriella Tiltman v Moon Predictions Ltd — 2025

At an open preliminary hearing by CVP on 11 March 2025, Employment Judge Chapman held that Ms Gabriella Tiltman was not an employee or worker of Moon Predictions Ltd at the relevant time. The tribunal accepted that she provided receptionist services and was paid for them, but found that the parties intended a self-employed relationship and, in any event, there was no mutuality of obligation and no requirement for personal service.

The tribunal relied on email chains from 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2020 in which both parties referred to the claimant as self-employed. It rejected the claimant's allegation that some of those emails had been doctored, preferred Ms Moon's evidence where there was conflict, and found the claimant's changing explanation about probationary self-employment did not assist her case. It also accepted Ms Moon's evidence that any substitution right was inconsistent with personal service.

Although the tribunal accepted that the respondent exercised an appropriate degree of control over how the work was done, it held that this did not overcome the absence of mutuality of obligation and personal service. The claimant's pleaded claims for unfair dismissal, notice pay and holiday pay were therefore dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The tribunal also held that no whistleblowing claim had been properly pleaded in the ET1, that the references to concerns about a customer and to Protect did not set out the constituent parts of a protected disclosure, and that it would not be fair or just to allow an amendment to add whistleblowing.