The case concerned whether match fees paid by PGMOL constituted earnings from employment for income tax and National Insurance purposes. PGMOL’s protracted dispute against HMRC began in the First-tier Tribunal in 2018, and made its way through every stage of the appellate courts until the Supreme Court heard the case in 2024. Having found against PGMOL, the Court remitted the case to the First-tier Tribunal to decide the employment status of National Group referees.

What did the Supreme Court ask the tribunal to determine?

The Supreme Court found that there was an "irreducible minimum" of mutuality of obligation between PGMOL and the referees they engaged, and that there was a sufficient “framework of control” in place. This satisfied the first two of the three tests established in Ready Mixed Concrete (South East) Ltd v Minister of Pensions and National Insurance [1968] 2 QB 497, which point towards the existence of an employment relationship.

However, the Supreme Court asked the tribunal to determine whether employee status actually existed by carrying out the third test: in the light of all relevant circumstances, were the referees engaged for individual football matches working under contracts of employment, or not?

Why didn’t the Tribunal find the referees were employees?

If you’ve been following this case over the last eight years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that employee status for National League referees was a foregone conclusion. After all, five Supreme Court justices unanimously found the key ingredients for an employment relationship – personal service, significant control, and mutual obligations – were all present.

So why did the Tribunal disagree?

Their decision rested on several key themes that will resonate with businesses engaging flexible or casual workers, both in the sports sector and beyond.

Mutuality of obligation: "suffused with choice"

There may have been an “irreducible minimum” of mutuality, but the obligations between PGMOL and its referees were nevertheless "narrow, short-lived and suffused with choice". There was no obligation on PGMOL to offer appointments, nor on referees to accept them. Referees could block off dates and decline appointments for any reason, or no reason at all.

Significantly, referees could withdraw from an accepted appointment right up until arriving at the ground, without facing any disciplinary sanction or penalty. If they did, PGMOL would appoint a replacement.

This is a powerful illustration of how genuine freedom to accept or reject work remains one of the strongest indicators pointing away from employment.

Control: regulatory, not contractual

PGMOL exercised significant control by setting match day procedures, fitness protocols, assessments and coaching systems. However, PGMOL simply re-hashed regulatory requirements that the Football Association imposes on referees. Because PGMOL’s control was regulatory, facilitative and developmental rather than managerial or supervisory, the Tribunal gave this control little weight when it came to determining whether referees were employed by PGMOL.

Operational involvement is not the same as organisational integration

The Tribunal drew an important distinction between "operational involvement" and "organisational integration". While referees were operationally embedded within PGMOL's systems, their professional identity, authority and accreditation derived from the FA. PGMOL's role was administrative. Referees did not participate in its governance or commercial activities.

Working regularly within an engager's systems does not, of itself, equate to being integrated into the engager's undertaking as an employee.

A lack of economic dependency

While referees bore little financial risk and had no opportunity for entrepreneurial profit, the absence of economic dependency was given considerable weight. In almost all cases, refereeing was a secondary activity that did not provide livelihoods; referees were economically anchored elsewhere.

A very serious hobby

The final factor that persuaded the Tribunal was that refereeing was not a standalone profession. For most, it was a vocational hobby. This went to explain the significant time commitment referees gave to it. It provided an explanation for why individuals would subject themselves to significant control without the promise of building any standalone business.

Typically, these questions would point towards an employment relationship. Here, the explanation that refereeing was a pastime that required hours upon hours of personal investment provided a parallel explanation that was suitably convincing.

What does this mean for businesses that regularly engage casual workers?

The multi-factorial assessment remains genuinely open-ended

This decision is a helpful reminder that the multi-factorial assessment of employment status remains a neutral, qualitative exercise. It may not ultimately be satisfied even where there is an "irreducible minimum" of mutuality and a "framework of control". Businesses should not assume that the presence of some degree of control or regular patterns of work will inevitably lead to a finding of employment.

Time to re-visit HMRC’s CEST tool

Perhaps the most significant practical takeaway for businesses concerns the reliability — or lack thereof — of HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax (CEST) tool. CEST was introduced in 2017 and has been used by thousands of businesses to determine how to tax workers.

This case exposes a potential flaw in the tool, which effectively accepts that mutuality of obligation plus control equates to employee status. The nature and quality of those mutual obligations is critical to the analysis. CEST's failure to grapple with this nuance means businesses relying solely on the tool may be reaching unreliable conclusions about the status of their workers.  It is unclear whether HMRC will re-visit how CEST operates.

This is a tax case, but much the same considerations apply in determining whether someone is  an employee for the purposes of employment law – although while tax law only has two statuses (employee and self-employed), employment law also has the intermediate category of “worker”.  A government consultation on simplifying employment status was a Labour manifesto commitment.  The Employment Rights Act 2025 was completely silent on this incredibly thorny issue, although the government did repeat its commitment to consult on this in future in summer 2025.  Further developments are still awaited though.

Practical steps for businesses

You should consider:

• Reviewing whether your current engagement arrangements genuinely preserve workers' freedom to accept or reject work.
• Revisiting whether workers can disengage without incurring a penalty after they have accepted work.
• Examining whether your control mechanisms are really managerial and supervisory, or whether they can be better characterised as facilitative and quality-assuring.
• Relaxing requirements which may be taken to indicate integration into the core functions of the business.
• Assessing the extent to which your workers are economically dependent on you for their livelihood, or whether the engagement is supplementary to other income.
• Conducting your own multi-factorial employment status assessment rather than relying exclusively on CEST.

You may find it helpful to review our Insight article on employment status, which sets out the various factors to consider in a qualitative test.

Professional Game Match Officials Ltd v The Commissioners for HMRC [2026] UKFTT 654 (TC) – judgment available here