1. The essential ingredients of a ‘household’ are a property element, a family element and a living (ie home) element.
2. The essential common feature for all types of ‘domestic worker’ is that the service provided by the employee has to be within a private household and to be personal to the employer or through him for another member of his household.
3. ‘Use of a household for himself on a regular basis’ must require frequent or habitual use of those premises by the employer himself. Also, ‘use’ in the context of a ‘household’ requires that the employer lives in the premises at least for part of his time. Meeting this condition requires considerably more than the employee being the caretaker of a property owned by the employer, which he might intermittently visit, even if the property is one occupied more regularly by other members of his household.
4. A family coming to the UK can bring with them a domestic worker who has been employed by them for over a year as part of their household, whether it is a visit or is part of a one-step or phased migration. There could be some limited delay, if properly explained. It would however exclude a domestic worker who, after the family has migrated to the UK, remains in the overseas home beyond a short and properly explained time lapse, unless the property continues to be a household used by the employer for himself on a regular basis; the other requirements of the Rule have been met: and the employee will be travelling with the employer or another member of his household. [As to the significance of the connection between employer and employee see DD (paragraph 159A: connection/employment) Sri Lanka [2008] UKAIT 00060].
[2008] UKAIT 00085
Bailii
England and Wales
Updated: 04 July 2021; Ref: scu.278539