Casual Workers and Continuity of Employment

Abstract

Cornwall County Council v Prater (CA) [2006] IRLR 362, CA The decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of Cornwall CC v Prater is an important new development in the ongoing debate about the employment status of so-called ‘casual’ workers. The judgments facilitate the use by casuals of the statutory continuity provisions in sections 210–219 Employment Rights Act 1996 (hereafter ERA) to link a succession of individual contracts of employment into a continuous employment relationship. Mrs Prater worked for the council’s Education Out of School Service. The service arranged tuition at home for those pupils who needed it, for example, because of illness or because they had been excluded from school for bad behaviour. Mrs Prater was not employed under a single continuous contract of employment. Instead, she was engaged separately to teach each pupil as the need arose. The council was under no obligation to provide Mrs Prater with pupils and there were periods during which she had no pupils at all. Mrs Prater never turned down an offer of work and the whole arrangement lasted for a period of ten years from 1988 to 1998. In 1998, Mrs Prater became a part-time employee of the Education Out of School Service.