Mr A Pirzada v Ms S Viswarajan — 2020

At the open preliminary hearing on 10 September 2020, Employment Judge Burgher considered whether the Tribunal had jurisdiction to hear the claimant's claims against Ms S Viswarajan. The claimant said he was pursuing unfair dismissal, disability discrimination, a contractual claim for notice pay, and defamation. The tribunal identified jurisdictional issues including that the ACAS early conciliation certificate named UEL rather than the respondent, that the claimant was not an employee of the respondent or UEL, and that the claims appeared to be outside the Tribunal's jurisdiction in any event.

The tribunal found that the claimant had entered a student agreement with UEL on 11 June 2019 for the PGCE secondary science physics course, with tuition fees of £9,250, and that he received a £26,000 government bursary administered by UEL. It rejected the claimant's argument that dress code requirements, school guidelines, payment arrangements, or audit of performance made him an employee or apprentice. The tribunal concluded that the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 provisions he relied on did not apply to him, and that he was a student rather than an apprentice or employee of UEL.

On the ACAS point, the tribunal held that the fact that the certificate named UEL meant the respondent had not been given the statutory opportunity to take part in early conciliation. Applying rule 12 of the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure 2013 and the approach in Chard v Trowbridge Officer Cleaning Service Ltd, it decided this was not a minor error and that, in any event, it would not have been in the interests of justice to proceed. The tribunal also held that it could not hear a defamation or libel claim, and that an unfair dismissal claim would fail for want of the two-year qualifying period under section 108 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 even if employee status had been established. The claims were therefore dismissed.