Government to Introduce Fees for Lodging Employment Tribunals

But not ready to confirm a 2 year qualifying period… yet

Whether it was a “drafting error”, as BIS as describing it, or simply because the government aren’t quite ready to make the announcement yet, there was an insight into government’s plans this week when the Department of Business Innovation & Skills published its second statement on the One-in One-out New Regulations.

The original draft of the publication included the sentence “We are increasing the qualifying period for employees to be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years…”.

Once this was picked up by Paul Callaghan, there was a brief buzz on Twitter’s #ukemplaw tag before news circulated that this was a “drafting error” – only noticed by BIS after it was being discussed on Twitter, two days after the document was published.

The revised statement now only regurgitates earlier comments: “We are proposing to increase the qualifying period for employees to be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal from one to two years …” (page 14),  although this was the first official announcement that the coalition are “introducing fees for lodging employment tribunal cases to tackle vexatious claims”.

Filed under: Employment Tribunals, General News, Laws & Regulations by Employment Law Clinic           Post created on: September 30th, 2011