In person For the first v Mr D Bansal, solicitor For the second respondent: Mr T Hussain, representative UNANIMOUS — 2021

The tribunal held that the claimant was employed only by the first respondent, Aedifice LLP. It relied on the 2008 engagement letter, which contemplated one employment relationship, and the 2017 written contract with the first respondent, which described the claimant as a full-time Finance Manager with continuous employment from 2008. Although the claimant carried out bookkeeping work for the second respondent, the tribunal found there was no practical or legal necessity to imply a separate contract with Tasty Tales Ltd.

On unfair dismissal, the tribunal accepted that the reason for dismissal was redundancy. It found that the respondents were entitled to wait until the FreeAgent software trial had shown that the second respondent no longer needed the claimant's services before warning her that her role was at risk, and it held that consultation beginning on 4 May 2018, followed by meetings on 14, 21 and 24 May 2018, and the efforts to consider redeployment, were all within the range of reasonable responses under section 98(4) ERA 1996. The redundancy payment claim failed because the claimant was not employed by the second respondent, so there was no basis for any additional redundancy payment.

The age discrimination claim failed because the tribunal found the reason the claimant was not given an opportunity to input information into the FreeAgent software was that it made no business sense, not her age, and there were no facts from which age discrimination could be inferred under the EqA 2010 burden-of-proof approach. The holiday pay claim also failed: the holiday year ran from 1 January to 31 December, and the claimant could not show what holiday she had taken between 1 January and 31 May 2018 or prove entitlement to pay in lieu of untaken leave. All claims were dismissed.