The Ministry of Justice yesterday published the annual Employment and Employment Appeal Tribunal statistics for the period from 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2012.
Donald MacKinnon, director of legal services at fixed-fee employment law consultancy Law At Work comments: “Given the recent plethora of Government proposals to reduce the red tape burden on businesses, it is interesting to note that the statistics show a year on year decline in employment tribunal claims. Also of interest, in light of the Government’s proposals to reduce the cap on unfair dismissal compensation to a year’s salary is the fact that the median award for unfair dismissal remained relatively low at a little over £4500, suggesting that the Government’s reforms will have little effect on the average unfair dismissal claim.”
“Warning bells should be ringing with employers in the area of discrimination claims. The report highlights that not only are claim numbers slightly up, but, the awards granted are potentially crippling, with a record award of £4,445,023 granted last year in one claim.” Employment Tribunals received an overall total of 186,300 claims during 2011-12, equating to a 15% overall reduction in claims. It is interesting to note that the number of claims has been falling year-on-year since 2009. Of further interest will be the effect that some of the recently enacted and soon to be enacted reforms will have on the figures in the future. The raising of the unfair dismissal qualifying period to two years from April 2012, and the introduction of large fees for raising tribunal claims, due to come into force in the summer of 2013, will undoubtedly have the effect of reducing the number of claims further.
The largest sum awarded was in a race discrimination claim and was for a massive £4,445,023. Other discrimination claims, such as disability and age, also saw high maximum awards in this year (£390,871 & £144.100 respectively). Whilst these are the cases that you often read about in the press, it is important to bear in mind that these are the ‘show stoppers’: The average award for race discrimination was £102.259; disability discrimination awards averaged at £22,183; and £19,327 for age discrimination.
Finally, at first blush, an interesting statistic appears in relation to the number of costs awards made by Tribunals; which has seen a rise from 487 to 1,411. This would seem to suggest that Tribunals are being more inclined to award costs. However, on closer analysis, 800 of the 1,411 were, in fact, one multiple case which involved 800 claimants, all of whom were ordered to pay costs. Accordingly, if this case is counted as one, not 800, then the increase in the number of costs awards is slight, from 487 to 612, and more in line with the norm of tribunals being reluctant to award costs.
