In Person For the v Mr Dempsey (Solicitor) — 2025

At the preliminary hearing on 12 May 2025, the tribunal decided the employment-status issue between Ms L Prestwich and Your Energy Your Way CIC. The claimant had started work on 18 September 2023 as a trainee renewables technician and her employment ended on or about 16 April 2024. The hearing was limited to whether her arrangement was a common law contract of apprenticeship or a contract of service. The judgment noted that the wider case included claims for automatic unfair dismissal on protected disclosure grounds, direct age and sex discrimination, sex and age-related harassment, and whistleblowing detriment, but those merits issues were not determined in this decision.

The tribunal examined the written documents and the practical reality of the role. It noted that the offer letter, contract of employment and related paperwork repeatedly described the claimant as a trainee renewables technician, gave four weeks' notice provisions, imposed a probationary period, and contained a training-repayment undertaking capped at £20,000. The tribunal found that the claimant spent about nine days out of ten on site doing customer work under supervision, with additional e-learning and fortnightly external training, and it accepted Mr Taylor's evidence that the role was designed to enable trainees to contribute to projects rather than to follow a recognised apprenticeship route. It also relied on the claimant's January 2024 email stating that the arrangement felt like low wage labour rather than training.

Applying the common law factors it identified, together with Dunk v George Waller and Son Ltd, Commissioners for HMRC v Jones and ors (Trading as Holmescales Riding Centre), Flett v Matheson, and the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, the tribunal held that this was not a common law apprenticeship. It found that the respondent had clearly distinguished between trainee contracts and its separate apprenticeship agreements, which were fixed-term, tripartite, college-based and linked to specific NVQ qualifications. The tribunal therefore concluded that the claimant was employed under a contract of service and not under a contract of apprenticeship. No monetary award was made in this judgment.