Case 3202364/2018 · Employment Tribunal
Mr S Fordham v Orridge & Co Limited — 2019
- Case reference
- 3202364/2018
- Decision date
- 2 August 2019
- Jurisdiction
- England & Wales
- Judge
- Employment Judge Hallen Representation
- Venue
- East London Hearing Centre
Parties
2 namedClaimant
Mr S Fordham
Respondent
Key findings
Tribunal's reasoningThe tribunal found that Mr Fordham, a casual worker and supervisor paid at a contractual rate of £9.90 per hour, was not entitled to pay for all travel between home and client sites. The dispute was narrower: whether he was entitled to be paid when he was acting as the respondent's designated driver, collecting colleagues from their homes and transporting them to and from stock take sites. The tribunal accepted that the respondent allocated drivers to specific jobs, required designated drivers to contact passengers to make arrangements, and provided a hire vehicle for business use which the claimant was expected to use for that purpose.
On the contract, the tribunal held that the claimant's driving duties fell within clause 2, which required him to undertake reasonable duties other than those specifically engaged to do, and within clause 4, which entitled him to be paid for the hours actually worked by him personally. It rejected the respondent's case that the driving arrangements were merely optional car-pooling. The tribunal also found that the handbook provision stating that a worker was not entitled to pay while travelling to or from a place of work did not apply to these designated-driver journeys, because in those circumstances the claimant was already working and the colleague pickups were from homes rather than places of work.
The tribunal therefore held that, on occasions when Mr Fordham was the designated driver, he was entitled to be paid at his contractual hourly rate for the journeys to colleagues' homes, the journeys to the client site, and the return journeys after the stock take had finished. It described him as effectively acting as a taxi service for the respondent on those occasions. The tribunal did not need to determine the alternative national minimum wage argument because it had already found that the contractual pay claim succeeded. It made an unlawful deductions finding for the two-year period preceding the claim and listed a separate remedy hearing for 13 December 2019.
Claims and outcomes
1 finding recorded| Claim type | Issue or finding | Outcome | Protected characteristic | Award |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unlawful deduction from wages | The tribunal upheld the claim under section 13 ERA 1996 for occasions when the claimant was undertaking designated driver duties, limited to the two-year period immediately before presentation of the claim. Remedy was not quantified in this judgment and was listed for a later hearing. | Upheld | — | — |
Legal tests applied
3 references- section 13 ERA 1996
- National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 regulation 30
- National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015 regulation 34
Official outcome judgment PDF
Gov.uk primary recordThe official judgment PDF on gov.uk contains the tribunal's outcome, reasoning, and any remedy details. Where this page does not yet show extracted outcomes for every claim, use the PDF as the authoritative source.
Published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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