Browne v South East Scotland Regional Scout Council — 2022

This was an open preliminary hearing on employment status only. The claimant was an experienced multi-activities instructor who worked intermittently at Bonaly for the respondent from 2015 until 2020, under a series of contracts including a 2018 zero-hours contract that said it was not an employment contract and that there was no mutuality of obligation between assignments. The respondent accepted that she was a worker but denied that she was an employee.

The tribunal held that there was no mutuality of obligation between engagements, so the claimant was not retained under a global or umbrella contract between assignments. However, once an assignment had been offered and accepted, the parties were mutually obliged: the claimant was required to do the work personally, the respondent was obliged to pay for it, and the respondent exercised sufficient control over timing, duration and manner of the instruction work. The tribunal also found that the contractual wording did not fully reflect the reality of the arrangements during assignments.

Looking at the overall picture, the tribunal concluded that the claimant worked under a contract of employment during individual engagements and therefore had employee status when she was actually working. It did not accept that the intermittent pattern of work, or the label used in the 2018 contract, displaced that conclusion. The tribunal distinguished the position during work from the position between assignments, and stated that the question of whether the claimant had two years' continuous employment as at 20 July 2021 would need to be determined separately if not conceded by the parties.