The Ministry of Justice has published its latest report on Employment Tribunal statistics, which this time covers the period from July to September 2022 (Q2 2022/2023). 

 
With due regard for the usual caveats about the reliability of the data, the anecdotal reports received from employment lawyers (of a system which is struggling to cope) would seem at first glance to be at odds with the data, which suggest the Tribunal service is starting to catch up.   Is that the true picture?

 

 - Employment tribunals received 18,000 claims and disposed of 13,000 claims in Q2. Compared to Q2 in 2021/2022, the year prior, overall receipts decreased by 19% and disposals increased by 6% - so on the face of it, less new claims are coming into the system this year and more existing claims are being dealt with.   The reduction in new claims might be expected, given Q2 a year ago was still in the midst of the pandemic which led to a surge of litigation.   However, during that period when very few in-person hearing were taking place,  one might have expected the increase in the disposal rate this time around to be far higher than 6%. 
  
 - At the end of September 2022, there were 493,000 claims outstanding in the system, 448,000 of which were multiple claims and 45,000 of which were single claims. Outstanding caseload decreased by 3% compared to Q2 2021/2022, so again, on the face of it the Tribunal system is slowly catching up.  However, as mentioned above, if the system was  considerably hampered a year ago by the impact of the pandemic, is a 3% movement significant enough?   

The report also contains compensation and costs figures for the employment tribunal and EAT for the year 2021/2022. There were 630 claims that received compensation for unfair dismissal and the mean award was £13,541 (compared to a mean award of £12,080 in 2020/2021). There were 200 discrimination cases in which compensation was awarded. The maximum award was £228,117 for a race discrimination case. However, sexual orientation discrimination claims received the largest mean award compared to other jurisdictions (£32,680).

Employers and employees who find themselves caught up in Tribunal litigation will know only too well that the system is struggling at times, more so in some regions than others perhaps, but perhaps the recent data does show signs of improvement - will be welcome news to all.