UK tribunal: a fully remote job does not carry a right to work from another country
A UK employment tribunal has dismissed an unfair dismissal claim brought by a home-based employee who moved to France and carried on working after her employer refused permission. The decision in I Malyk v Teleperformance Contact Ltd (case 6018900/2024, Employment Judge Hazel Oliver) sits on the public register of employment tribunal decisions with a decision date of 2 July 2026, and drew wide coverage in the UK employment press from 19 August.
Iryna Malyk joined Teleperformance Contact in May 2022 as a European regional finance business partner. Her contractual place of work was her home in Bristol, and the company’s office closed in September 2022. When her husband took a job in France in early 2024, she asked to relocate and keep doing the same role. The company refused, saying that employing her permanently in France on a UK contract raised legal and tax exposure it was not set up to manage. She moved anyway, and within about a week was called to an investigation meeting over an alleged failure to follow a reasonable management instruction to work from the UK. The tribunal found the contract required her to work from her home in the United Kingdom, held that the employer’s concern about complying with French legal obligations was a substantial rather than trivial reason for dismissal, and concluded that dismissal fell within the range of reasonable responses.
Why this matters
If you hold a UK contract and work fully from home, that arrangement is tied to a place – here, Bristol rather than anywhere with a decent connection. Moving to Spain or France and continuing the same job changes your employer’s obligations: they may owe payroll, social security contributions and employment-law duties in your new country, and may have no legal entity there to carry them. This ruling confirms that an employer refusing on those grounds can lawfully dismiss an employee who relocates without agreement. Before you move, get written agreement covering your place of work, which country’s social security you pay into, and where you are tax resident. Verbal reassurance from a line manager is not the same thing.
Context
The decision lines up with an Irish Workplace Relations Commission ruling reported earlier in August, which backed an employer that dismissed a worker for relocating to India without approval. Tribunals in both jurisdictions are treating “fully remote” as a description of where work happens inside a country, not a licence to pick the country. Employment tribunal decisions do not bind other tribunals, so this is persuasive rather than precedent-setting.
What to watch
The practical routes for working from another European country are an employer of record arrangement, a local contract, or genuine self-employment invoicing from where you live. See our guides on using an employer of record for a European remote job and social security when working remotely in Europe.