In a dispute about whether or not the claimant, an imam at Redcoat Community Centre & Mosque in Tower Hamlets, was an employee, the Employment Tribunal (ET) decided that he was employed by the mosque. An imam, like a Christian cleric, must make himself available to his congregation when needed; however, each mosque committee determines individually how its mosque is to be run and the Employment Tribunal reached its decision on the particular facts.

The ET applied the test at paragraph 10 of Lord Sumption's judgment in President of the Methodist Conference v Preston [2013] UKSC 29 that ‘The primary considerations are the manner in which the minister was engaged, and the character of the rules or terms governing his or her service’: in short, that such cases turn on the facts. It was further informed by Lord Clarke's judgment in Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher & Ors [2011] UKSC 41 and his approval of MacKenna J's dictum in Ready Mixed Concrete (South East) Ltd v Minister of Pensions and National Insurance [1968] 2 QB 497 about the conditions to be fulfilled in order for there to be a contract of service. The ET also noted that in Ur-Rehman v Doncaster Jahia Mosque (Unfair Dismissal: Compensation) [2012] UKEAT 0117 12 1008 (handed down before the Supreme Court judgment in Preston) a claimant imam had been held to be an employee. [Frank Cranmer]