A Harper & Ors v Alliance Healthcare Management Services Ltd

Where contractual documents direct a defined group of employees to a separate handbook for details of overtime payments, the natural construction may exclude that group from the substantive overtime provisions in the general staff handbook. The documents must be read in their employment context and as a coherent whole.

An employment tribunal is ordinarily entitled to decide the case identified by the final pleadings and an accurate agreed list of issues. A party seeking to rely on a materially different contractual source or formulation of its claim must apply to amend. The tribunal need not decide an unpleaded alternative case.

The claimants were LGV drivers who brought unlawful-deduction claims concerning overtime pay. They alleged an entitlement to enhanced pay for hours exceeding prescribed daily hours.

The final amended particulars identified pages 44–45 of the 2017 Alloga Staff Handbook as the contractual source of that entitlement. The agreed list of issues asked whether that handbook entitled the claimants to daily overtime pay. The Employment Tribunal held that its overtime provisions did not apply to drivers and dismissed that aspect of the claims.

On appeal, the claimants challenged that construction and contended that the tribunal should have determined the effect of the separate Drivers’ Handbook.

1. Appeal dismissed. The Employment Tribunal did not err in holding that the substantive overtime provisions in the 2017 Staff Handbook did not apply to drivers.

2. The direction that drivers should refer to the Drivers’ Handbook for details of overtime payments was to be read in its contractual and employment context. The Staff Handbook applied generally, while the Drivers’ Handbook contained provisions tailored to drivers. Reading the two documents as proposed by the claimants would require drivers to compare provisions line by line to determine which applied. The natural meaning was that drivers were excluded from the particular substantive overtime provisions in the Staff Handbook, including provisions governing when overtime rates became payable.

3. The 1996 collective agreement contained a materially similar direction to drivers to refer to a drivers’ booklet. It supported the same construction. Clause 6 of the individual contracts, which guaranteed 48 hours per week and referred to overtime up to 60 hours in a week, also entitled the tribunal to treat weekly hours as the relevant basic metric and as supporting its conclusion on when overtime entitlement arose.

4. Applying Moustache v Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2025] EWCA Civ 185, the tribunal was entitled to confine itself to the final pleaded case and the agreed list of issues. The claimants had particularised the Staff Handbook as the source of the alleged right. Their later reliance on the collective agreement and Drivers’ Handbook advanced a materially different case. In the absence of an amendment application, the tribunal was not required to determine that alternative construction.

5. The tribunal therefore gave adequate reasons for not determining the Drivers’ Handbook’s effect. The EAT observed that, had that issue required decision, the tribunal’s reasoning would not have been adequate given the competing arguments; but that observation did not affect the dismissal of the appeal.

• Employment Appeal Tribunal: Appeal dismissed: [2026] EAT 55.
• Employment Tribunal: At a preliminary hearing, the tribunal held that the 2017 Staff Handbook did not give the LGV drivers a right to daily overtime pay and dismissed that aspect of their unlawful-deduction claims.