Employment Status

[Thanks to Thomas Brown of Cloisters for writing this case summary]

HHJ Peter Clark, sitting alone in the EAT in Little v. BMI Chiltern Hospital , has held that the fact that the Respondent could, and did, send home workers half way through a rostered shift, without pay, when their services were not required, negatived the existence of mutuality of obligation, even on the basis of a succession of individual assignments each amounting to a contract of service.

The Employment Judge's finding that, on occasions, workers were sent home halfway through a shift without the worker being entitled to payment for the remainder of the shift materially distinguished the case from Cornwall County Council v. Prater [2006] IRLR 362 and North Wales Probation Area v. Edwards (12 December 2007). There was no more than a contract in the Stephenson v. Delphi Systems Ltd [2003] ICR 471 sense for freelance services.