Mr F Chagas v v London Borough of Enfield — 2020

The claimant worked as an Emergency Duty Team Manager for the London Borough of Enfield between 9 November 2017 and 3 May 2018 through an agency arrangement. The tribunal found that the agreed arrangement, evidenced by emails between the claimant and Ms Sarah Moran, provided for 37 core hours a week from 5pm to midnight at the agreed hourly rate plus a 25% unsocial-hours uplift, with separate on-call availability from midnight to 9am on weekdays and throughout weekends.

The claimant argued that he was entitled to be paid for every hour he was available on call, whether or not he actually performed work, and said that after deducting 200 hours of TOIL already taken he was owed 1,675 hours. The tribunal rejected that construction of the agreement. It found that the emails drew a clear distinction between work actually done and being available for work, that the on-call hours were subsidiary to the core hours, and that Ms Moran had indicated any TOIL would be limited and expected only at roughly three-month intervals.

The tribunal also rejected reliance on Matzak v Ville de Nivelles. It held that the claimant was not required to remain at a particular place or within tight geographical or temporal constraints, and that the evidence showed Ms Moran had even told him not to overwork and to step away from his laptop. The tribunal found no basis for implying a term that would convert all on-call availability into paid time, applying the Supreme Court approach to contractual interpretation and the stricter necessity test for implied terms.

On the facts, the tribunal accepted Ms Moran's evidence that TOIL had been granted on trust in two blocks amounting to about 200 hours, and that this was consistent with the limited TOIL contemplated by the emails. It concluded that the claimant was not entitled to payment for all on-call hours and was not owed 1,675 hours or any further unpaid hours beyond what had already been remunerated. The complaint of unauthorised deduction from wages was therefore dismissed.