Prime Aquariums Limited was incorporated in 2016. The sole director and shareholder at all times was Mr Karpavicius, the Claimant. In 2021 the company went into creditors voluntary liquidation. In 2022 an ET claim was begun by Redundancy Claims UK on behalf of the Claimant claiming a redundancy payment and payments of wages, holiday pay and notice money. The company was a Respondent but did not take any part in the proceedings. The then Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy was also named as a Respondent. The Secretary of State resisted the claim, in particular asserting that the Claimant had not been an employee of the company. Time points were also raised. The ET dismissed the claims for wages, holiday pay and notice monies as out of time. It upheld the claim for a statutory redundancy payment and ordered the Secretary of State to pay it in the amount of £1,322.15. The Secretary of State appealed.

The EAT allowed the appeal. The ET decided the question of employee status on the basis that the fact that he was the sole director and shareholder of the insolvent company claimed by him to have been his employer was necessarily wholly irrelevant. That was not a correct application of the guidance in Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform v Neufeld and Howe [2009] EWCA Civ 280; [2009] ICR 1183.