Strictly for charity
What impact has the
introduction of fees
in the Employment
Tribunal had?
According to the recently issued statistics
that compared the period October
to December 2012 with October to
December 2013 the impact of fees has
been huge. The headline figure showed
that there had been a 79% decrease of
claims. The introduction of fees on 29th
July 2013 was intended to discourage
speculative claims but these latest figures
do lead one to wonder whether only such
claims are being discouraged. Could it
really be said that three quarters of claims
in the Employment Tribunal prior to fees
being introduced were unmeritorious?
A caveat was issued by the Ministry of
Justice with regard to the figures. They
said the figures should be treated with
“extreme caution” and were at pains to
say that they were provisional and could
be revised in due course. However, it
would take a huge adjustment to avoid the
conclusion that fees are deterring claims
being made, when the statistics released
for the third quarter in 2013 also showed a
significant downward trend in claims being
made in the Employment Tribunal.
The reason for some caution is that not
all cases have necessary been included
within the statistics. This is because a
claim is not entered onto the internal
case management system, upon which
the statistics are based, until either
a relevant fee is paid or a remission
application has been granted. The result
of this is that there could potentially
be a number of claims that will only
be formally accepted at a later stage.
We ourselves have noticed that where
remission has been requested the claims
are taking a considerable amount of time
to be processed.
In our experience, the claims now being
made do tend to be more considered and,
also, that the rate of the downward trend
in numbers is not uniform. In the East
London Employment Tribunal it appears
there has been a decrease of only 25% in
56
live cases. Regional Employment Judge
Carol Taylor has acknowledged this was
not the picture in other regions. This
could be because workers in banking
and financial services sector in the City
find the fees less of