No rights to claim unfair dismissal or redundancy

Agency workers are not employees of the end user or hirer, so they have no right to claim unfair dismissal or redundancy pay from the hirer when the relationship ends (James v London Borough of Greenwich [2008] EWCA Civ 35). It makes no difference that the agency worker is assimilated into the hirer’s organisation, is under its direction and control or is treated in all other respects just like the hirer’s directly employed workers (Tilson v Alstom Transport [2011] IRLR 169, Smith v Carillion (JM) Limited [2015] EWCA Civ 209).

A court will only imply a contract of employment between the agency worker and the hirer where this is necessary to give effect to the parties’ intentions. It will never be necessary to do this where the parties clearly intended to create a standard agency relationship.

The only time such a contract is likely to be implied is where there is evidence that the documents do not reflect the parties’ true intentions. Here is a rare example: