I have a client, a single parent, who works about 10.5 hours per week in one job.

She is also in the Territorial Army. For this, she goes on a training evening (2 hours) once a month. She also goes on a camp once a month, Friday night to Sunday night. She has to be available at any point in this time, being 'on duty' permanently. She is paid just over £30/day for this.

She has been turned down for WTC on the grounds of not working 16+ hours per week.

Does anyone out there have experience of arguing about what working hours are in the TA? Clearly we don't need to show she actually works 24 hours a day to get her up to the 16pw average - provided we can average it over the whole month (but can we?)

Any contributions welcome!

See below the CAB information system

6.4.0.1
54 Working time is defined as the time that a worker is 'working, at his employer's disposal and carrying out his activities or duties'. For a worker who is 'on call', a case in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (see endnote 16) has decided that if a worker has to be physically present at her/his workplace during the time s/he is 'on call', then all of that time counts as working time, even if s/he is not actually working for part of it. If s/he does not have to be physically present at the workplace when on call, but merely contactable, for example, by phone, then that time spent away from the workplace does not count as working time, unless s/he is actually doing work for part of it.

54a The decision of the case in paragraph 54 has been confirmed by a second case (see endnote 19) in the ECJ. This case decided that, even if a worker can sleep at work while s/he is on call, all hours spent at the workplace count as working hours and not hours of rest.