Group-action recovery for workers, contractors and pilots.

Aviation

Pilot pay & holiday claims

Airline pilots engaged via agencies are workers in law — entitled to holiday pay, pension contributions and statutory protections their engagers have rarely honoured.

Following the Supreme Court ruling in Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5, the Court held that Uber drivers were workers and not self-employed contractors — and so were entitled to workers' rights including holiday pay. The same logic applies across other agency-engaged workforces.

Lutz v Ryanair DAC & Storm Global Ltd (formerly MCG Aviation Ltd) is the test litigation that closed the door on the agency/PSC defence in aviation. It was brought with the support of BALPA (the pilots' union). Mr Lutz had been required to operate through a personal service company called Dishford, set up at the agency's direction — an arrangement the Employment Tribunal (East London, EJ Housego, March–April 2022) described as a fiction intended to camouflage the employment relationship, and which the Court of Appeal later called "distinctly unsatisfactory". The ET found Mr Lutz to be a worker employed by the agency under the Civil Aviation Working Time Regulations 2004, and an agency worker within the meaning of reg. 3(1)(a) of the Agency Workers Regulations 2010.

The decision was upheld by the Employment Appeal Tribunal in [2023] EAT 146 (Mrs Justice Heather Williams with members Mr Nick Aziz and Mr Andrew Morris; Rolls Building, 30 November 2023) and again by the Court of Appeal in [2025] EWCA Civ 849, in a judgment of Underhill LJ (Vice President) handed down on 8 July 2025, with Males LJ and Laing LJ agreeing. The Court confirmed that worker status under the protective legislation is wide and inclusive in a tri-partite agency relationship, and that a fixed-term supply of five years still meets the statutory test of working "temporarily" for the hirer — endorsing Singh J in Moran v Ideal Cleaning Services Ltd [2014] ICR 442. Ryanair was refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court (Ryanair DAC v Lutz, UKSC/2025/0128) — the judgment is final.

The same conclusion has now been reached across Europe. On 21 January 2026 the Berlin-Brandenburg State Social Court (case no. L 16 BA 48/23) ruled that Ryanair pilots at German bases are employees subject to social security contributions — describing Ryanair's multi-tiered British-intermediary and Irish one-person-company structure as a "legal fiction" intended to obscure the true employment relationship. In Spain, the Juzgado de lo Social núm. 3 de Girona (Sentencia 311/2025, 23 September 2025, Magistrado-Juez D. Iván Pinilla Paramio; N.I.G. 1707944420198051207) found in favour of Captain Ian Charles Kenyon against Ryanair DAC, Brookfield Aviation International, MCG Aviation (now Storm Global) and Elise Aviation in a dismissal action.

We are acting for pilots who were engaged by Ryanair via agencies, and claiming workers' rights for the entire period of engagement. If you have flown for Ryanair (or another carrier) as an agency-engaged pilot, you may have been underpaid.

Umbrella Companies

Unlawful deductions from pay

Umbrella Companies routinely shave pay through deductions the law doesn't permit. The largest offenders — Employer NICs and the Apprenticeship Levy — must come out of the company's pocket, not yours.

Changes to the off-payroll working rules — both public-sector and private-sector — have pushed contractors into Umbrella Company structures, often against their will. Many find themselves facing misleading and unfair deductions: Employer National Insurance Contributions, Apprenticeship Levy, Workplace Pension Contributions, and Holiday Pay.

As a matter of law, employers (including Umbrella Companies) cannot deduct Employer NICs or Apprenticeship Levy from a worker's gross pay. Where they have, we recover those amounts.

If you have worked through an Umbrella Company at any point since 2017, your payslips may show deductions you are entitled to recover. Take the General Assessment — we'll tell you whether your numbers look right.

Workers' Rights

Holiday pay & pension rights

Workers misclassified as self-employed can recover holiday entitlement going back to 1998 — when the EU Working Time Directive was introduced — and pension contributions back to 2012.

Many organisations exploit workers by treating them as self-employed when in law they are workers — entitled to the same working conditions and basic pay as employees doing comparable work.

Following King v Sash Window Workshop Ltd, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that a worker — even one the employer incorrectly believes to be self-employed — must be allowed to accrue paid annual leave rights until the termination of the arrangement.

This right can stretch back to 1998 for holiday entitlement and to 2012 for workplace pension contributions. We are currently supporting thousands of claimants in active group actions against engagers who have failed to provide these basic rights.

Tax / HMRC

Loan Charge mitigation

We have identified an angle — with leading tax and employment QCs — to recover from agencies the tax suffered by contractors under the Loan Charge.

We have worked tirelessly to find a resolution for contractors and workers affected by the Loan Charge Legislation. Through challenges in the courts — Hoey (First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal) and Finucane (Court of Session) — we don't profess to have defeated the Loan Charge, but we have identified another angle.

Sums earned by contractors via agency arrangements constitute earnings under s 62 ITEPA and are caught by the agency rules at s 44 ITEPA. The Agency is the deemed employer for PAYE purposes — meaning it should have deducted income tax and Class 1 NICs and accounted for them to HMRC.

Where the Agency failed to operate PAYE as required, the contractor or worker is entitled to claim for any loss suffered as a result of the loan charge due to the Agency's negligence. We pursue those agencies on the contractor's behalf — and also claim the holiday entitlement that should have been received but wasn't.