One area of employment law that can cause issues for charities is that relating to volunteers. Problems arise if the charity no longer requires the volunteer's assistance. This happened in Prior v Millwall and Melhuish v Redbridge CAB. Both Mr Melhuish and Mrs Prior claimed that they were actually employees and therefore entitled to bring unfair dismissal claims.

One of the key issues for the Employment Tribunal and later the Employment Appeals Tribunal was whether in either case services were provided in return for some form of remuneration (a critical part of the test as to whether someone is an employee). Mr Melhuish claimed that his expenses and training amounted to remuneration, but the Employment Tribunal disagreed. He was therefore, not an employee. In Mrs Prior's case, she received no payment from the football club and therefore also was not an employee.

However, although volunteers claiming to be employees often fail to show that they have received remuneration, it is clearly in the interests of well run charities to ensure that unnecessary and expensive legal claims from volunteers are avoided. Steps should therefore be taken to ensure that the status of your volunteers is clear. In particular volunteers must not be paid or given anything that might be considered to be remuneration for their work. Appropriate measures taken now could prevent unnecessary litigation in the future.