The Respondent is a specialist mental health foundation trust which provides services extending to those detained under the MHA. The Claimant was one of approximately 30 individuals whom it engaged as an Associate Hospital Manager (AHM), namely a person authorised by the board of the trust under section 23(6) of the MHA. The Claimant sought to establish that she was 'employed' under a contract personally to do work (as the Equality Act puts it) or any other contract (whether express or implied and, if it is express, whether oral or in writing) whereby the individual undertakes to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract whose status is not by virtue of the contract that of a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual (as the Employment Rights Act puts it). The Respondent's pleaded position was that in very broad terms, that appointment as an AHM necessitated independence from the trust, hence the statutory restriction on those whom a trust may authorise to discharge its functions. The ET ruled that it was not possible to be simultaneously an AHM and an 'employee' of the trust but that did not mean that an AHM was inevitably without employment rights or employment protection. The ET concluded that in relation to the Respondent the Claimant was a “worker” for the purposes of section 43K(1)(a) and/or section 230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996 in relation to her complaint under section 47B of that Act and was also in employment under a contract personally to do work for the purposes of section 83(2)(a) of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to her complaint under sections 27 and 39 of that Act. The Respondent appealed.

The EAT dismissed the appeal. The ET had not made an error of law in determining that the Claimant was a worker.