Cairns v Visteon UK Ltd

EAT: Judge Peter Clark, Ms V E Branney and Mr J R Rivers: 29 November 2006

The claimant, an administrative assistant, was engaged under a contract of service by an employment agency, which provided her services to the respondent company. After a dispute over time sheets with the company's manager her employment was terminated by the agency. On her claim of unfair dismissal, naming the company as respondent, an employment tribunal found that, since there was a contract of employment between the claimant and the agency, there was no need to imply a contract of employment between the claimant and the company in order to give business efficacy to the relationship, and it dismissed her claim.

The claimant appealed.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal held:
Where a contract between worker and agency was one for services, it might be possible to imply a contract of service between the worker and end-user, so as to provide protection under Part 10 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, but where a worker was employed by the agency, and was thus protected, there was no good policy reason for extending that protection to a second employer. Further, there was no apparent business necessity for implying a contract of service with the end-user in a triangular relationship where the worker had entered into a contract of service with the employment agency, and, on the facts, it was open to the tribunal to conclude that the conduct of the parties was consistent with the claimant's services being supplied to the respondent company under the terms of the contract of service between the claimant and the agency and the commercial contract between the agency and the company as end-user.

The appeal was dismissed.

Appearances: Fatim Kurji (Brindley Twist Tafft & James, Coventry) for the claimant; Anya Palmer (Hammonds, Birmingham) for the respondent company.