Ms L Borrini v The National Trust for Scotland, SC007410 — 2025

Ms L Borrini brought complaints under the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002 arising from her work as a seasonal gardener on fixed term contracts covering April to October 2022, April to October 2023, and April to 11 October 2024. The tribunal recorded that she has autism and ADHD and made reasonable adjustments during the hearing. It also dealt with her application to amend the claim to add constructive unfair dismissal, which it refused under the Selkent approach and the overriding objective.

The amendment was refused because the tribunal found it was a new substantive claim, not an elaboration of the existing FTW detriment case, and it depended on facts inconsistent with the ET1. The tribunal found that her last period of employment ended on 11 October 2024, that she was not employed when she said she resigned on 24 March 2025, and that any constructive unfair dismissal claim would in any event have been out of time because it was reasonably practicable to present it sooner. The tribunal considered the timing, the claimant's knowledge of the time limits, the advice she had received, and the prejudice to the respondent.

On the FTW detriment claims, the tribunal identified six allegations: PPE, pension entitlement, obstruction from joining the pension scheme, delayed Nest enrolment, lack of seasonal worker training budget, and lack of access to the training requests process. It found that the last alleged detriments occurred in April 2024, April 2023, or August 2024, and that the claimant knew of the cause of action by 14 August 2024 at the latest. It held that the claims were considerably out of time under regulation 7(2) of the 2002 Regulations and that it would not be just and equitable to extend time under regulation 7(3).

The tribunal also dealt with prospects. It found that the complaints about obstruction from joining the pension scheme, Nest enrolment, and training budget had no comparable permanent employee and therefore had no prospect of success under the Regulations. For the training requests process claim, it accepted the respondent's argument that the process was for seasonal workers rather than permanent employees and held that claim was bound to fail. For the PPE and pension entitlement allegations, it accepted that a comparator had been identified but said those matters would still have required factual findings; however, those claims also failed on limitation. All FTW detriment claims were dismissed.