Tribunal Claims for 2009-10 – 14% increase

The Tribunals Service, an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice, published its first annual statistics recently; this included the latest employment tribunal statistics, showing a rise in claims for most jurisdictions.

In real terms (claims figures can be distorted by multiple claims, particularly when these are in the thousands. The single cases measure is more reliable to observe actual trends), there was a 14% increase in claims to employment tribunals; this increases to 56% when multiple claims are considered.

Of the claims made in 2009-10, 112,400 were disposed of – actually went to a ruling – an increase of 22% over the 2008-09 figures (almost 60% of these cases were single cases).

Notable among the claims were those made under:

• Working Time Directive – an increase of nearly 300%;
• unauthorised deductions from wages- an increase of 123%;
• redundancy pay – claims under this jurisdiction increased by 76%;
• Transfer of Undertakings – 38% more claims under what is a complicated law for those employers taking over a business;
• age discrimination (cases of the nature brought by Berry & Keane) – this relatively new jurisdiction saw claims increase by 37%;
• written pay statement – a very simply thing for employers to comply with saw claims rise by 27%;
• written statement of terms & conditions (Statement of Particulars) – another relatively simply obligation for employers to comply with, yet claims rose by 20%.

On a more positive note, there were notable decreases in claims for:

• redundancy (failure to inform and consult) – claims were down 34%;
• Part-time Workers Regulations – claims were down nearly 20%;
• National Minimum Wage – claims here were down by more than 16%.

Of the cases that did proceed to a tribunal hearing, twice as many (28,500) were successful as those failing (14,300).

The current information does not include the average value of awards made by the employment tribunals, but details for 2009-10 will be provided when available.

If your business does find itself among the thousands of respondents in 2010-2011, give it the best chance to be among the 14,300 successfully defending the claim – get complete support from the moment you receive an ET3.

Filed under: Employment Tribunals, General News by Employment Law Clinic           Post created on: July 24th, 2010