Employment Tribunal Statistics Show Significant Increase in Number of Claims

The recently published Employment Tribunal statistics show a significant increase in the number of claims brought last year.  Overall, there was an increase of 56% which was due mainly to a significant increase in multiple claims (where two or more people bring claims arising out of the same set of circumstances) but also to the changing economic climate. 

• The most common heads of claim are: (i) working time directive claims – thought mainly to be due to multiple claims from a large number of airline workers which are re-submitted every three months; (ii) unauthorised deduction from wages; and (iii) unfair dismissal.

• Of the discrimination claims, sex discrimination is by far the most common claim (18,200 claims), followed by disability discrimination (7,500), race discrimination (5,700) and age discrimination (5,200).

•  71% of interviewees said that they were satisfied with the overall service from the Tribunal and 78% described the staff dealing with their calls as knowledgeable.

• The Tribunal has a target maximum waiting time of 6 months from initiation of a claim to the hearing.  Last year only 65% of cases met this target.

• Of the 227,000 Tribunal claims brought, only 19% made it through to full hearing and, of those, approximately 2/3 were successful and 1/3 were unsuccessful.