Since the introduction of the Employment Tribunal fees in July 2013, the number of claims brought in the Employment Tribunals has plummeted. This has been good news for employers, as blackmail claims are now a thing of the past and the threat of a claim has probably never been so low.

However, the situation is now that an unscrupulous employer can take advantage of the fees to poorly treat or even dismiss an employee without the fear of retaliation through the Employment Tribunals. In many cases, there are employees who are unable to defend their legal rights due to the costs involved.
We have therefore gone from a system that was detrimental to employers and was collapsing under the weight of claims brought, to a system that is detrimental to employees where claims are sparse.

The government has finally agreed that they will review the fees to identify whether the fee system has been successful in meeting the goals of transferring costs from the tax payer to Employment Tribunal users, encouraging parties to find other ways to resolve their disputes and maintaining justice. Incidentally, this announcement comes just before the Court of Appeal is due to hear Unison’s judicial review application and would most likely be asking why the government hasn’t so far made good on its undertakings to review the fee system.

So, watch this space! In my view, there is a strong case for a reduction in Employment Tribunal fees. I don’t believe they should be or will be removed altogether as this would return us to the undesirable situation we had before July 2013 in which claims were made against employers without merit.

It is unlikely we’ll see a decision before the end of the year, but remember that employees have 3 months from the date of the act complained of to submit their claim in the Employment Tribunals and so the reduction in fees will apply to any events occurring in the 3 months before the reduction. For example, if an employee is dismissed on 10 October 2015 and fees are reduced from 1 January 2015, then the employee would be able to bring their claim for unfair dismissal on the reduced fee rate.

As always, do feel free to contact me with your views or queries. My email is katebooth@eatonsmith.co.uk and my telephone number is 01484 821309

Best wishes
Kate
Posted Monday 27th of July 2015