Melina Santos Ferreira v Wynter Rose Limited — 2025

This was a reserved judgment following a preliminary hearing on 11 February 2025 at the East London Hearing Centre (via CVP) before Employment Judge G. King, to determine the Claimant's employment status. The Claimant, a hair stylist who had worked from the Respondent's salon from June 2021, brought claims of unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal, unlawful deductions from wages, holiday pay, failure to provide a written statement of reasons for dismissal, and failure to provide an itemised pay statement; a statutory redundancy payment claim had previously been withdrawn. The Respondent contended that the Claimant was a self-employed contractor and that the Tribunal therefore lacked jurisdiction.

The Tribunal accepted Ms Wynter's evidence that a written template contract sent on 12 June 2021 was dispensed with at a meeting on 14 June 2021 and replaced by a verbal arrangement. It found that clients booked directly with the Claimant through the Ovatu booking system, that there was no mutuality of obligation, that the Claimant could and did substitute her work (including cover by her twin sister Cynthia), that she set her own hours with no set pattern of work, was free to work elsewhere, supplied her own tools and her own trolley, and was responsible for her own tax. The Tribunal distinguished the case from Gorman, where bookings were assigned by the respondent and set hours applied.

Applying the statutory definitions in ERA 1996 s.230(1) and s.230(2), and referencing Bacica v Muir, the Tribunal concluded that the Claimant was neither an employee nor a worker of the Respondent. She therefore had no standing to bring the claims in her ET1, and all remaining claims were dismissed. No remedy was awarded.