- New reforms to help employment tribunal system hear more
cases and open up court space – ensuring a speedier resolution of
cases for businesses and employees
- enables deployment of a greater range of judicial expertise
including non-employment judges into tribunals
- rules will be amended to allow greater use of virtual
hearings
A raft of changes to boost hearing capacity in employment
tribunals has been introduced into Parliament by Business
Minister today
(Thursday 17 September). The reforms will give the system more
flexibility in light of the global COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. They will
also allow tribunals to deal with increasing caseloads, following
the abolition of employment tribunal fees in July 2017.
The government is changing employment tribunal rules to allow
more flexibility for remote hearings and reduce the burden on
courts, claimants and defendants. These changes will help
tribunals hear more cases and make courts space available for
other urgent cases, an important step in addressing the impacts
of COVID-19.
The reforms will assist tribunals in ensuring the speedier
delivery of justice for businesses and workers.
Business Minister said:
The employment tribunal system has held up very well in the
face of an increased caseload and the impacts of COVID-19 – but these changes will boost
its capacity further.
These reforms will provide further flexibility to the system to
ensure workers and businesses receive quick and fair
resolutions to disputes, both at this critical time and in the
future too.
Courts Minister, , said:
These changes will provide speedier resolutions for businesses
and employees alike, and are the latest step in our plan,
backed by £80 million of funding and an additional 1,600 staff,
to reduce delays and deliver justice.
We are pursuing every available option including increasing the
use of technology, rolling out further safety measures to
ensure our courts recover from the effects of the pandemic as
quickly as possible.
One of the changes being made will allow the judiciary the option
of deploying non-employment judges into employment tribunals, if
certain criteria on suitability are met. This will help the
employment tribunal system deal with demand, reducing unnecessary
delays.
The government is also changing employment tribunal rules to
allow more flexibility over virtual hearings. The change will
reduce the need for physical hearings in the future making it
easier for claimants and respondents, who, for example, will not
need to pay travel costs.
This follows a recent £80 million boost for HM Courts and
Tribunal Service to meet the unprecedented challenge presented by
the pandemic to:
- employ 1,600 new staff to support the recovery
- set up more temporary Nightingale Courts
- and a further rollout of technology across the estate to hear
more cases remotely
This is on top of a major £142 million investment across the
courts system announced in July to speed up technological
improvements and modernise courtrooms.
Other changes being implemented include:
- allowing legal officers to carry out administrative tasks
currently performed by employment judges
- refining the early conciliation and employment tribunal rules
to allow greater flexibility in handling minor errors
- changing the rules to allow multiple claimants and
respondents to use the same forms where reasonable, to avoid
multiple certificates and time limits in what is essentially the
same dispute
The measures for the employment tribunal rules, use of legal
officers and cross-deployment of judges will come into force on 8
October. The measures on early conciliation will come into force
1 December.
