QB-2018-004997 - [2025] EWHC 2301 (KB)

I find that what the Claimant told the investigator in May 2022 about having horses in her charge was the truth. Whatever the legal position, she was responsible for the care of more than one horse on a long term basis. What she told me in evidence was not true. She simply would not have said what she said to the investigator if the position were otherwise. If her coming in to work with dirt on her hands and in outdoor clothes unsuitable for work as a funeral director had been because of a short-term need to help Shireen Timmis out with her horses, then that would have been what she said at the time, as it would have been an answer to her employer’s concern.

To state, as the Claimant did in oral evidence, that she did not recall giving what was a lengthy and detailed account of her ownership of horses was not credible. I am confirmed in that conclusion by the later reference to her responsibility for vet’s bills for the horses. The Claimant attempted to construe her answers in this part of her investigatory interview to make them consistent with the scenario she had put forward in oral evidence. This involved her suggesting that when she said ‘normally’ in the context of coming in to work after looking after horses that meant the same as ‘for that week but not afterwards’. I do not accept that.

The Claimant’s account to the investigator is in fact consistent with a Facebook message she sent to her mother in July 2022 saying that she was ‘just feeding the horses’. The use of that phrase without further expansion suggests that it was a regular activity rather it being a ‘one-off’ favour for Shireen Timmis. That is what I find it was.