Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v VB and another (UC): [2024] UKUT 212 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Ward on 17 July 2024.
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Judicial Summary
The First-tier Tribunal’s decision was set aside due to the reversing by the Supreme Court of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Fratila. 3 grounds were advanced before the UT why the decision should be remade in the claimants’ favour: (a) self-employment, (b) self-sufficiency and (c) retained worker status. Ground (a) required a consideration of the relevance of preliminary steps towards setting up a business under art.49 TFEU. R(IS) 6/00 applied. On the facts the claimant had done enough to advance matters beyond a mere idea to taking initial steps towards setting up the business, which was enough. In the alternative, the claimants succeeded on ground (b) following a Brey-style assessment; it carried weight that the difficulties were temporary in character. Ground (c) required the claimant to show that there had been no undue delay in registering with the jobcentre. In fact it took her 14 months, but even if (without deciding) a Saint Prix period would have exempted her from the need to comply with the requirement of art.7(3) of Directive 2004/38 while it was running, she could not qualify for a Saint Prix period. She would have needed to have retained worker status up to the start of it and the delay in registering up to the start of any putative Saint Prix period was on the facts “undue” and worker status was lost.