In person For the First v Morgan Hunt — 2022

Mrs Yates worked for Hounslow from 10 October 2019 through an umbrella-company arrangement, first with Six Cats and then with Umbrella-Company Limited. At this hearing she sought interim relief on a complaint of automatic unfair dismissal for making protected disclosures. She said that on 9 February 2022 she raised safeguarding concerns with Christine Acock, and on 14 February 2022 she repeated them to the Care Quality Commission. She also said that, after a period of sickness absence, she found on 9 March 2022 that she could not log in and was told Hounslow needed someone else to do the work and did not want to pay two sets of wages.

The tribunal cited sections 128 and 129 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the authorities on interim relief, including the "pretty good chance" approach in Taplin v Shippam Limited, together with the summary nature of the task described in Dandpat v University of Bath, London City Airport v Chacko and Al Qasimi v Robinson. It stressed that it was not making findings of fact and was working only from the limited material available at the application hearing.

On that material, the tribunal concluded that Mrs Yates appeared to be an employee of Umbrella-Company Limited, whose employment had not been terminated, and not an employee of Hounslow. It said the 2011 "Scrutiny Review of Non-Permanent Staff" did not assist in determining the nature of her relationship with Hounslow. It could not say that she had a pretty good chance of showing either that she was Hounslow's employee or that Hounslow ended the assignment because of the protected disclosures rather than because of her absence from work, so the application for interim relief did not succeed.