Tribunal claims: now the good news
Results are in. The Ministry of Justice recently published the Employment Tribunals and Employment Appeal Tribunal statistics for April 1 2010 to March 31 2011 (see The next step). They show that 218,100 claims were accepted during this period - this is an 8% drop on the previous figures. Of these, 60,600 were single claims, i.e. those brought by one employee, whereas the other 157,500 were generated through multiple actions, such as the various public sector equal pay cases. But what other information does the data contain?
Lower claims. Firstly, unfair dismissal claims are down - having soared to 57,400 in 2009/10, there were only 47,900 cases in 2010/11. This is partly due to the fact that fewer redundancies were made in the past twelve months. Many employers didn’t follow a fair process during the recession and were challenged on it by disgruntled staff. Similarly, breach of contract claims also fell (42,400 to 34,600) as did unlawful deduction from wages claims (75,500 to 71,300).
(Un)expected. However,age-related discrimination claims shot up by 30.8% with 6,800 being heard in all. This means they’re now the third most frequent type of discrimination complaint launched by employees - disability and sex rank in first and second place. Also, the average compensation awarded to successful age discrimination claimants has risen by nearly £20,000 to £30,289. So for employers on the receiving end of one of these claims, it may prove even more costly now.
Tip. The default retirement age was abolished during this period, which partly explains the rise. Going forward, employers will probably dismiss older staff (where necessary) on capability grounds. The tribunal is aware of this and will go through any resulting unfair dismissal claims with a fine-tooth comb.
For further information on the latest tribunal statistics, visit http://personnel.indicator.co.uk(PS 13.18.01).
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