Tribunal claims increase by 56%

The Tribunals Service latest figures show a sharp increase in the number of employment tribunal cases brought against employers.

   
Over the past year, employment tribunal cases have grown from 151,000 to 236,100. This is a 56% rise on the previous year.

The highest number of tribunal claims lodged was for working time breaches (including holiday entitlement), followed by unauthorised deductions from pay and unfair dismissal.

Claims associated with the Working Time Directive increased from 24,000 last year to 95,200 in 2009-10.

Equal pay employment tribunal claims dropped during 2009-10 from 45,700 to 37,400. Redundancy failure to inform and consult claims also fell.

Commenting on the findings, Owen Warnock, partner at law firm Eversheds said: “It is clear that the steep increase in claims this year is mainly attributable to multiple claimant claims, which rose by nearly 90% on the same period in 2008-9. This is exemplified by the fact that, as at the end of March, three-fifths of the claims still to be dealt with by the Tribunals Service as a whole were multiple claimant cases to the employment tribunals.

“The multiple claimant cases are cases in which two or more people bring cases arising out of the same or very similar circumstances. They will be largely equal pay, working time, TUPE and redundancy cases, often brought with union support.

"The increase in unfair dismissal claims is undoubtedly a consequence of the economic downturn.  As well as complaints by employees about being made redundant, many of these extra claims will stem from employers facing up to the need to tackle underperforming members of staff.

"However, for the private sector at least, we appear to be past the nadir of the recession, and this is reflected in the decrease in the number of claims that employers have failed to fulfil their collective consultation obligations properly in mass redundancy situations.  It remains important however for employers, who can sometimes feel frustrated at legal requirements to consult staff representatives about potential redundancies, to fully comply with the consultation obligations.  Attempts to short-circuit the process can backfire and lead to steep penalties for employers."

The figures also show a significant increase in the number of age discrimination claims: 5, 200, compared with the previous year's 3800 claims.  Owen Warnock points out that factors other than the recession will have played a part in this increase: “Laws protecting against age discrimination in the workplace have been around for a relatively short period of time.  As employees are becoming increasingly aware of their rights in this area it is not surprising that we should see a rise in the number of claims."

In a free podcast Jayn Bond, Head of HR at Workplace Law, discusses the kinds of cases that can go to tribunal, what the potential costs are and how the process works.