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	United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Employment Appeal Tribunal >> Phillips v Scott & Anor [1995] UKEAT 810_95_0610 (6 October 1995) URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/1995/810_95_0610.html Cite as: [1995] UKEAT 810_95_610, [1995] UKEAT 810_95_0610

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BAILII case number: [1995] UKEAT 810_95_0610

Appeal No. EAT/810/95

EMPOLYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL

58 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON EC4Y 0DS

At the Tribunal

On 6 October 1995

Before

HIS HONOUR JUDGE HICKS QC

DR D GRIEVES CBE

MR G H WRIGHT MBE

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MR A PHILLIPS          APPELLANT

(1) MISS M SCOTT

(2) MISS J SIBLEY          RESPONDENTS

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Transcript of Proceedings

JUDGMENT

PRELIMINARY HEARING

Revised


 


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APPEARANCES

For the Appellant MR A E PHILLIPS

(APPELLANT IN PERSON)


 


JUDGE HICKS QC: Miss Scott and Miss Sibley, who are the Respondents to this appeal, were employed in a Hair & Beauty Centre, Miss Sibley from April 1991 and Miss Scott from March 1993, until they were dismissed on 10 January 1995. They made claims against the Appellant Mr Phillips for redundancy payment in the case of Miss Sibley, who had been employed long enough to qualify for a redundancy payment, and as to both of them for a month's wages in lieu of notice. The Industrial Tribunal found in their favour. It is quite apparent from the Tribunal's reasons that the principal issue before them, and the principal problem with which they were faced, was tracing the identity of the employers through a series of changes, because the business having originally as they found been the Appellant's then passed into the hands of a couple called Mr & Mrs Barnett, and then later of a Mr & Mrs Tuck. The question which chiefly needed to be decided by the Tribunal was what happened when the Tucks left just before Christmas 1994, that is to say on 6 December.

The background to this was that, as the Tribunal found and as Mr Phillips agrees, he was throughout the freeholder of the property. The Tribunal found, but Mr Phillips disagrees, that the Barnetts by lease and the Tucks by some sort of tenancy agreement were direct holders under Mr Phillips. Mr Phillips says that is wrong, and that interposed between his freehold interest and the interests of Mr & Mrs Barnett and Mr & Mrs Tuck was a headlease which he had granted to a company called Hartlands Corporation, set up by him but of which he says he is now no longer a shareholder, although he is still a director.

The Tribunal found that the relationship of landlord and tenant, lessor and lessee, between Mr Phillips and first the Barnetts and then the Tucks was direct, and as I have said he disputes that, but it is quite apparent from the reasons of the Tribunal that it was not because of that landlord/tenant relationship, whether they were right or mistaken about it, that the Tribunal came to the conclusion that Mr Phillips was the employer at the time of dismissal. The reasons why the Tribunal came to the conclusion that Mr Phillips was the employer at the date of dismissal is the history of what happened when the Tucks left. As the Tribunal found, on the date the Tucks left, on 6 December 1994, Mr Phillips appeared at the premises, and was already there when Miss Sibley came in. When she came in he said to her: "You have got me again". The Tribunal found that work then carried on and that both Miss Scott and Miss Sibley received their usual wages at the end of that week and indeed for the period from 6 December onwards until they were dismissed. The Tribunal found that those wages were paid by Mr Phillips from 6 December until Miss Scott and Miss Sibley were dismissed. The Tribunal also found on Mr Phillips' own evidence that he took the profits of the business over that period, and it was on those findings of fact that the Tribunal came to the conclusion that there was a transfer of undertaking from Mr & Mrs Tuck back to Mr Phillips and that Mr Phillips became the employer of Miss Sibley and Miss Scott.

The bundle of documents contains letters which Mr Phillips wrote to Miss Sibley and Miss Scott on 9 January. The copy in the bundle has no other name on it. Mr Phillips says that it would have been sent on headed notepaper of the company, but be that as it may it is all written in the first person singular, and indeed it was noteworthy that in his address to us, although he took the point about the existence of the company, whenever he referred to decisions or actions, he always spoke of them as having been made by himself personally. Those letters of the 9 January, although they include the claim in each case "I am not legally your boss" are all expressed in terms of a decision which Mr Phillips makes and proposals which Mr Phillips offers to Miss Sibley and Miss Scott, effectively that he is only prepared to allow them to stay on the basis that they run the business on a self-employed basis.

There was therefore ample evidence, both oral and written, on which the Tribunal were entitled to find, as they did find, that Mr Phillips was the employer, and there is no possible ground on which the Tribunal's decision could be attacked as erroneous in law. We therefore dismiss the appeal.