Imagine turning up for work before most people have had their first coffee and not clocking off until the early hours of the next morning every single day. That’s the reality behind the eye-opening case of Ms M Ogumodede v Churchill Contract Services [2025].
For more than 16 years, Ms Ogumodede juggled two full time cleaning jobs in secret, racking up an incredible 77.5 hours a week, breaching the Working Time Regulations’ crucial legal requirement of an 11 hour rest period between shifts. By day, she cleaned from 8am to 5pm at Deutsche Bank (40 hours a week) and as night fell, she moved to the Houses of Parliament (HoP) from 10pm until 6am (37.5 hours a week). A total of 17 hours a day leaving herself a few hours’ rest before she had to do it all again.
The tribunal commented: “It is remarkable that she was able to sustain this in circumstances where it was not in dispute that the claimant had a clean attendance and disciplinary record in respect of her HoP work.”
The situation became apparent when Churchill Contract Services assumed responsibility for the HoP cleaning contract through a TUPE transfer. As a result of the transfer, it was discovered that Ms Ogumodede had not disclosed her dual occupations at any stage, including during the transfer process.
Faced with the breach of working time laws and her failure to disclose her other job, Churchill suspended Ms Ogumodede without pay. Yet, they did not simply wash their hands of her. Churchill explored a range of solutions, offering reduced shifts (6pm to 9pm), alternative roles and voluntary redundancy but Ms Ogumodede turned down every option.
Ms Ogumodede was convinced she had been wronged and brought claims for unfair dismissal, breach of contract, unauthorised wage deductions, and redundancy pay to the tribunal. The tribunal dismissed all her claims, ruling that the dismissal was fair, the contract was unenforceable due to common law illegality (by virtue of the breach of the Working Time Regulations), and that Churchill had acted reasonably in trying to accommodate her by offering alternative working arrangements to rectify the problem, before resorting to dismissal.
This case offers important takeaways for both employers and employees.
- The Working Time Regulations (WTR) specify that there must be 11 hours of rest between shifts. Ms Ogumodede’s 77.5 hour work week did not comply with these requirements, resulting in her contract being unenforceable under common law.
- Employers have always had a duty under the WTR to monitor their employees’ working time and this includes taking account of any hours undertaken in secondary employment. However, as illustrated in this case, it is a notoriously difficult monitoring exercise as it generally relies upon (accurate) information being provided by the employee. It is wise to make the provision (and updating) of this information a requirement under the employment contract.
- Transparency is essential for employers to be able to discharge their duty to monitor working time and employees failing to disclose secondary employment may face serious consequences by either (or any) of their employers if they breach contractual obligations to provide such information; or, as this case illustrates, if their working time is found to be in beach of the legal limitations imposed by the WTR.
- During a TUPE transfer, outgoing employers (transferors) are obliged to provide specific information about each member of the transferring workforce to the new employer, which can uncover previously undisclosed information.
- A fair dismissal process shields an employer and Churchill's actions helped it successfully defend its position victorying tribunal.
- Despite Ms. Ogumodede’s sixteen years of dedicated service, there was a clear breach of employment law which resulted in a fair termination. Therefore, length of service and loyalty do not override the necessity for legal compliance.
Comment
Compliance with Working Time Regulations is likely to be monitored by the Employment Rights Bill’s Fair Work Agency
The government’s new employment rights enforcement body, the Fair Work Agency (FWA), will be responsible for monitoring employers’ compliance with working time obligations such as safe working hours / patterns, as well as holiday leave and pay.
It is anticipated the FWA will be up and running by April 2026 (subject to any delays with the governments Employment Rights Bill implementation roadmap’.
Although the FWA’s key role will be to monitor and enforce employment law compliance by employers, it will also assist individuals to enforce their rights. As such, it may be that the FWA would advise individuals such as the claimant in this case to better understand their legal position, which could potentially have avoided her bringing this unsuccessful claim.
For more information about the Employment Rights Bill provisions about the Fair Work Agency, see our ERB Series insight about it here.
More details on the Employment Rights Bill ‘implementation roadmap’ from the same series.
This insight is co-authored by, Professional Support Lawyer, Rupinderjit Sandhu.
