Employment Tribunal claims continue to rise

The Ministry of Justice have recently published the annual statistics for April 2018 to March 2019, which show that the number of claims accepted by the Tribunal increased by over 11,400 on the previous 12 months. The figures showed that 121,111 claims were accepted. The increase is expected as the number of claims continues to rise year on year following the removal of fees in July 2017, but the figures are still short of the last pre-fees figure of 191,541.

The statistics also showed that although the highest award for a number of claims was higher this year, the average & median awards were lower for Unfair Dismissal, Race Discrimination, Sex Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, & Religion or Belief Discrimination. Awards for Age Discrimination did, however, see an increase.

Whilst costs awards remain low, and were lower in 2018/2019 than the previous year, it continued to be Respondents who received costs awards more often.