A St. Andrews Old Course professional golf caddy has won what could be a landmark appeal after being denied ‘jobseekers allowance’ for the months when his services were not in demand.
Douglas Saunderson sought the allowance for the quiet winter months when he was not required to work as a caddy, but his application was turned down by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) at the end of 2007.
His subsequent appeal in the case was then rejected by a tribunal, which held that he was in a “recognisable cycle of work.”
The Caddy Pavilion at St. Andrews.
However Mr. Saunderson took his fight to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, where three judges headed by Lord Eassie ruled in his favour.
Court papers reveal:-
“During the spring and summer of 2007 the appellant (Saunderson) worked, as he had done in the spring and summer of some previous years, as a golf caddie at the Old Course in St Andrews.
In order to work there as a caddie, he required authorisation from the body owning and managing the Old Course (and, we understand, other courses in St Andrews) namely the St Andrews Links Trust.
The appellant’s authorisation to work as a caddie in St Andrews was withdrawn in October 2007 for the reason that the demand for caddies is much reduced in the winter months.
Caddies at St Andrews, though requiring authorisation from the St Andrews Links Trust, are self-employed in the sense that they receive no salary from the manager of the golf course. The golfer engaging the caddie pays a fee (£40 – in 2007) for the round for the services of the caddie, which fee, after deduction of a sum payable to the St Andrews Links Trust, is then paid over to the caddie.
The Trust was not under any commitment to allow the appellant to work as a caddie on the golf courses in St Andrews in the following, or any other future year.
Following the withdrawal of his authorisation to work as a caddie in October 2007 the appellant, on 29 October 2007 applied to the Department for Work and Pensions for a jobseeker’s allowance. That application was rejected on 14 December 2007.
The appellant, among others, appealed to the First-tier Tribunal which in June 2008 disallowed the appeal. The essence of the reason for that disallowance was expressed thus:
The Tribunal at Kirkcaldy found that in all of the cases before it, the appellants were self-employed seasonal workers with a recognisable cycle of work of one year and were either in remunerative work or their average earnings over the course of a year were in excess of their applicable amount or both of these. That fact or these facts disentitled the appellants to the benefit claimed and the appeals were accordingly disallowed.”
Lord Eassie in upholding the appeal in favour of Saunderson remarked: “Plainly there may be many self-employed trading or professional activities in which it is not difficult to say that the professional or trading activity continues notwithstanding an idle period. An example might be the arable farmer who, having ploughed and sowed the winter wheat in the autumn, has relatively little to do until the arrival of the spring.
In some respects, one might draw an analogy with a schoolteacher whom one would readily say was in work albeit that his teaching duties are punctuated by school holidays in which he has little by way of professional activity to perform.”
It is not surprising the caddy’s legal team, Morisons Solicitors, said the decision was an “important and significant finding” for many self-employed professionals who work seasonally.
