(sitting alone) Mrs K Ure v Represented by: Ms J McKinley Strathclyde UniversityLaw Clinic Chemcem Scotland Ltd and 1 other — 2018

The tribunal held that the claimant was employed by the first respondent from 8 June 2015 to 25 September 2017. It accepted that she had been on the first respondent's payroll from 2009, but found that before June 2015 she was only occasionally helping her mother and receiving payments without mutuality of obligation. When she took the role of General Manager of the Blue Ridge Equestrian Centre in June 2015, the tribunal found that there was a verbal employment contract with the first respondent and that she was to be paid by that company.

On the employer issue, the tribunal applied the approach in Secretary of State for Education & Employment v Bearman and concluded that the first respondent was the claimant's employer. It relied on the verbal agreement to pay her by the first respondent, the fact that most contracts for the Equestrian Centre were with the first respondent, and the evidence that the centre and its assets remained with the first respondent. The judge added that, if wrong about the original contract, the claimant would in any event have become an employee of the first respondent by TUPE when the organised grouping transferred on 1 July 2017.

On maternity leave and termination, the tribunal found that the claimant's statutory maternity leave began on or about 26 September 2016, that neither respondent notified her of the end date of that leave, and that her statutory maternity pay ran for 39 weeks until 18 June 2017. It found that she did not return to work on 25 September 2017 or thereafter, so her employment ended on that date. The ET1 was presented on 5 November 2017, so the tribunal held the claim was in time and that it had jurisdiction in principle to hear the case. The judgment did not decide the merits of the notice pay, holiday pay, unfair dismissal, maternity discrimination or redundancy payment complaints.