Mr S Bennett, Counsel For the v Mr R Crabtree, Consultant — 2026

This was a preliminary hearing before Employment Judge Morton sitting alone at London South by CVP on 13 January 2026 to determine the claimant's employment status on 28 August 2024, the date his engagement with the respondent (a groundwork, civil engineering and concrete structures specialist) ended by text message from Paul Helliar. The claimant had a long association with the respondent dating back to either 1993 or 1995. The tribunal heard evidence from the claimant and from the respondent's Managing Director Aaron McSkimming and contracts manager Tony Dopson, and considered a bundle of 366 pages.

Applying s230 ERA 1996 and the case law on employment status, the tribunal concluded that the claimant was not an employee within s230(1) ERA at the relevant date. The judge found that the arrangement lacked the irreducible minimum of mutuality of obligation: the claimant had been able in 2023 to decline work at the Stratford site and the respondent had been tardy in offering further work, with a similar pattern of agreed gaps in 2018. The judge rejected the submission that the relationship had changed character after April 2023, finding no evidence that the parties had begun to operate on a different basis from that which had prevailed over almost 30 years. Some weight was also given to the claimant having represented himself as self-employed for tax purposes over a long period, including applying for a self-employed Covid support grant.

The tribunal nevertheless found that the claimant was a worker within s230(3)(b) ERA: there was a sufficient degree of control, the actual contract (as distinct from the written terms at page 49) contained no right of substitution and required personal service, and features of the relationship were incompatible with that of client and independent business. The consequence is that the claims under s98 and s103A ERA were dismissed, while the s47B ERA detriment claim was permitted to proceed. Issue 4(d), the date the claimant commenced work, was held over to any final hearing because the evidence did not allow a conclusion, though the judge observed that length of service was unlikely to remain important given the finding on employee status.