ESM0543 - Guide to determining status: mutuality of obligation

There must be an irreducible minimum of mutual obligation for there to be a contract of service. That irreducible minimum is

• that the engager must be obliged to pay a wage or other remuneration, and
• that the worker must be obliged to provide his or her own work or skill.
• (See reference to the concept of mutuality of obligation in Nethermere (St Neots) Ltd v Gardiner and Taverna at ESM7110.)
• However, the irreducible minimum could be present in either a contract of service or a contract for services and therefore, by itself, it will not determine the nature of a contract.
• The question of mutuality of obligation poses no difficulty during the period when the worker is actually working for the engager. For that duration the worker undertakes to work and the engager in turn undertakes to pay for the work done. The mutual obligations (to work on the one hand and to be paid on the other) will continue to exist until the contract is terminated and will provide the fundamental mutual obligations – see Stephenson v Delphi Diesel Systems Ltd [2003] ICR 471 at paragraph 13.
• The issue whether the worker is required to accept work, if offered, or whether the engager is obliged to offer work as available is irrelevant to the question of whether a contract exists at all during the period when work is actually being performed – see Stephenson v Delphi Diesel Systems at paragraph 14.
• See also the Court of Appeal case Cornwall County Council v Prater [2006] EWCA Civ 102 and the words of Mummery LJ and Longmore LJ
• In his summing up Mummery LJ said:

“Nor does it make any difference to the legal position that, after the end of each engagement, the Council was under no obligation to offer her another teaching engagement or that she was under no obligation to accept one. The important point is that, once a contract was entered into and while that contract continued, she was under an obligation to teach the pupil and the Council was under an obligation to pay her for teaching the pupil made available to her by the Council under the contract. That was all that was legally necessary to support the finding that each individual teaching engagement was a contract of service.”

In reply to the submission from Counsel for the Appellant that mutuality of obligation had to be understood in a special sense of an ongoing duty to provide work and an ongoing duty to accept work, Longmore LJ said:

“[43] I cannot accept this submission. There was a mutuality of obligation in each engagement namely that the County Council would pay Ms Prater for the work which she, in turn, agreed to do by way of giving tuition to the pupil for whom the Council wanted her to provide tuition. That to my mind is sufficient “mutuality of obligation” to render the contract a contract of employment if other appropriate indications of such a contract are present.”

The concept of mutuality of obligation is often considered in more detail in employment protection law situations where many benefits and rights only accrue after a specific period of continuous employment. In employment protection law it will often be very relevant whether work is carried out under a separate series of contracts (where no benefits may accrue) or under a single 'umbrella' contract which amounts to a continuing contract of employment (where benefits and rights may well exist). This is the reason for the case law on the subject.