Last week Employment Tribunal statistics for the last quarter of 2020 were published by the Ministry of Justice. These show that the number of claims being filed in the Employment Tribunals is on the rise. Multiple claims increased by a staggering 82%, while single claims filed increased by 25% compared to the same quarter in the previous year. This is most likely attributable to the Covid pandemic, which has seen an increase in unemployment, redundancies and changes to working terms and conditions.
The government anticipate that claims will fall in the first two quarters for 2021 as a result of the furlough scheme being extended to September 2021, but it is likely that when this scheme ceases that there will be a corresponding and exponential increase in the numbers of claims made in this year’s last quarter.
The report also demonstrated that the tribunal system continues to be under immense pressure. Its outstanding caseload has increased from 44,000 to 51,000 claims. However, it was still disposing cases at a reasonable rate – single claims remained stable, multiple claim disposals had increased by 66%. It is interesting to note that only 7% of cases were successful at final hearing, 27% being resolved by ACAS conciliated settlements and 9% of cases struck out before hearing. The remainder were withdrawn, and we presume that for most of these cases there was some sort of resolution achieved.
The most common claim brought was under the Working Time Regulations 1998, while there was also a big increase in age discrimination claims.
The report can be found here
This blog is by Anita Vadgama, Legal Director for didlaw.
