Employment Tribunal Statistics Published

The Government has recently published the quarterly statistics of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) for the period from January to March 2013.

The Government has recently published the quarterly statistics of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) for the period from January to March 2013.

In terms of the Employment Tribunal:-

• The number of claims received during this period was 57,737, being a 36% increase when compared with the same period of 2012.  This was due to a substantial number of claims brought under the Working Time Directive, which doubled over the period and accounted for over a third of the total number of claims made.
• The next largest number of claims made were in relation to unlawful deductions from wages (which made up 16% of the total number of claims) and unfair dismissal (making up 11% of the total number of claims).
• An employee or former employee can bring more than one jurisdictional complaint within a claim (for example claiming both unfair dismissal and discrimination).  The report states that on average, 1.7 jurisdictional complaints were made per claim. 
• Between January and March, the Employment Tribunals disposed of 27,778 claims, being a decrease of 3% when compared with the first quarter of 2012. 
• A total of 58,907 jurisdictional complaints were disposed of by the Employment Tribunal, comprising of:-
  • 19% for unfair dismissal;
  • 17% for unauthorised deductions from wages; and
  • 16% in relation to discrimination claims.
• On average, the total time for a claim to be dealt with (being from receipt of the claim to final judgment being given) was 80 weeks.  However, this average is affected by the age of a number of multiple cases, and in fact 50% of the cases were aged 31 weeks or less. 
• Equal pay and race or sexual discrimination cases lasted the longest (an average of over four years), while working time regulation claims had the shortest average clearance time of 37 weeks.