Employment tribunal quarterly statistics for the period January to March 2022

8,126 single claims were received by the employment tribunals in the period from January to March 2022 (a decrease of 11% from the same quarter in 2021) and at the end of March 2022 there were 42,406 outstanding single claims (a decrease of 4% from the same quarter in 2021), according to statistics published by the Ministry of Justice. During the same period, 9,022 multiple claims were received (a 40% decrease from the same quarter in 2021), and almost 11,000 multiple claims were disposed of (an increase of 170% from the same quarter in 2021), leaving 486,035 multiple claims outstanding (an increase of 1% from the same quarter in 2021) at the end of the 2021/22 financial year.

What are the implications?

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) report on tribunal statistics for the period January to March 2022 does not include receipts, disposal and caseload outstanding figures for the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), and the report notes that in relation to employment tribunal data:

• due to the migration of the employment tribunals to a new database during March to May 2021 it has not been possible to provide full results from both the original and replacement databases during the transition period on a consistent basis
• the data is still subject to checks, but there is increasing confidence in the numbers for receipts, disposals and caseloads outstanding which are presented in the report
• employment tribunal data is not available for April to June 2021 (ie Q1 2021/22), and as a result data for the full financial year of 2021/22 is not included
• jurisdictional breakdowns, timeliness and outcome data are still undergoing more rigorous checks and will not be presented until the checks are complete—it is therefore not possible to ascertain, for example, whether cases are being disposed of more quickly, or are taking longer to be processed, than previous years
• because of the operational differences between the new case management system and the previous database, caution should be exercised when making comparisons in the statistical results before and after migration.

For single claims brought in the employment tribunals, the figures for receipts, disposals and cases outstanding all decreased by 11%, 6% and 4% respectively, compared to the same quarter a year ago.

For multiple claims, the number of claims received decreased by 40% compared to the same period in 2020/21, disposals increased by 170% and the number of outstanding multiple claims saw a slight increase of 1%. However, figures for multiple claims tends to be more volatile as they can contain a high number of claims against a single employer. It can therefore be difficult to discern any trend.

The total number of cases disposed of by the employment tribunals in the period January to March 2022 saw a 56% increase on the same quarter last year (and is the highest level since 2014/15); however, almost 11,000 of the 17,723 disposed cases were multiple claims, with the number of single claims disposed of by the tribunal down by 6% in Q4 compared to the same period in 2021.

At the end of the 2021/22 financial year, a total of 510,441 cases were outstanding in the employment tribunals—a similar level to that at the end of 2020/21. This indicates that the last 12 months has seen the tribunal ‘treading water’. Given that the effects of the pandemic have continued to be felt during 2021/22 together with the introduction of a new case management system in the employment tribunals service during this period which will have taken up the time of judges as well as of administrative staff, treading water could be seen as a positive, particularly given the fact that the number of outstanding claims has been rising at a much faster rate year on year since 2014/15 when the number of outstanding claims was 219,045.

Pro Employment Law

Formed in 2017, following significant legislative changes designed to increase competition within the legal services marketplace, Pro Employment Law is a progressive set of barristers’ chambers, consisting only of experienced employment law barristers, offering a full range of specialist advisory, case management, and advocacy services directly to the public through the Public Access scheme. We supply our legal services exclusively in the area of Employment Law to clients located across England & Wales. All of the legal services we supply are covered by professional indemnity insurance with Bar Mutual.