Employment Tribunals 46 Weeks Wait For a Hearing Set to Rise

EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNALS - There has been a sharp rise in cases going to employment tribunals particularly in disputes centred on working time and age discrimination.

Employment tribunals concluded 14,000 claims from October to December 2020 a 24% increase over 2019. Working Time claims have overtaken unfair dismissal as the most common claim.

This has increased the backlog of outstanding claims with waits increasing to 46 weeks for a hearing. up from 41 weeks before the pandemic. A wave of redundancy claims is expected following the end of furlough.

From October to December 2020, single claims increased by 25% compared with the same period in 2019, but there was an 82% rise in multiple cases with 29,000 claims being received.

According to the Ministry of Justice, this was the result of high numbers of claims against single employers, with 1,000 multiple claim cases, up from 630 for the equivalent period in 2019. Also, there were 27 claims per multiple cases in 2020 as opposed to 12 claims per multiple cases in the equivalent previous period.

Image: A mock employment tribunal. 

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