Claimant v Mr I Williams and Ms C Williams — 2024

The claimant, a Nigerian citizen, said she was engaged as a domestic worker from 14 November 2022 to 20 March 2023, worked 127 days for about 19 hours per day, and was paid the equivalent of about £300. She alleged poor treatment and abuse, including sexual harassment by Mr Williams, and in her ET1 of 31 August 2023 pleaded automatic unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal, unlawful deductions, failure to provide a written statement and itemised payslips, holiday pay, breaches of the Working Time Regulations, harassment related to sex or sexual harassment, and breach of contract/wrongful dismissal. The respondents also brought a breach of contract counterclaim.

The tribunal held that it had territorial jurisdiction and that English law applied. It rejected the submission that an October 2021 contract continued to govern the relationship, describing that contract as fictitious or sham because the parties had not met until September or October 2022. It found that the claimant's UK engagement was a separate agreement for domestic work at the respondents' home in England, that the Domestic Worker Statement stated that the courts of England and Wales had jurisdiction and that English law applied, and that the dispute arose from work performed in Great Britain.

The tribunal left the issue of whether the claimant was entitled to work in the UK, and any illegality point arising from the visa, to the final hearing. When that issue arose during evidence, the judge referred to Cohen v Sandhu and noted that enforceability might depend on the claimant's participation in any fraud, citing Okedina v Chikale, Zarkasi v Anindita and Hounga v Allan. The judge concluded that the point could not fairly be decided in isolation from the wider evidence about the employment relationship, and the hearing was then part-heard and re-listed after an interpreter problem before resuming on 18 September 2024.

Applying the strike-out and deposit-order tests, the tribunal dismissed the respondents' applications. It held that all complaints turned on a core of disputed facts about the claimant's working conditions, her pay, and the circumstances in which and the reasons why she left the respondents' home in the early hours of 21 March 2023. It also said that the sex-related harassment allegations were plainly capable of amounting to harassment related to sex or sexual harassment, and that whether they were true had to be determined after evidence at a final hearing. No merits findings or monetary award were made at this stage.