The Employment Tribunals Service has, once again, published the statistics for the period April to June 2013 for comparison against the 2012/2013 figures. The statistics do not however make particularly interesting reading.
The quarter has shown a 10% (to 44,335) increase in the number of claims received by the Tribunal, compared to the same period in 2012. This increase has been caused by a 40% rise in Sex Discrimination claims, which is by far the most significant rise this quarter. Whilst the report does not confirm this, the increase is presumed to be due to multiple ‘group’ claims being submitted rather than single claims. In reality, the number of claims made at the Tribunal has stayed pretty much constant.
The release of these statistics is the first since the qualifying period for claiming unfair dismissal increasing from one to two years. Whilst there is a slight increase in the number of unfair dismissal claims against the corresponding quarter in 2012 and the previous quarter (December 2012 to March 2013) there is nothing to suggest any real change as a direct result of the new law.
It is also probably still too early to see the way in which the introduction of Tribunal fees will affect the number of claims being started at the Tribunal, but universal expectation is that the number of claims will take a sharp dip. The extent of this drop, however, will only become apparent when the October – December 2013 figures are released. The main winners however are expected to be employers who should face a reduced risk of claims.
We await the October to December 2013 statistics with great excitement!
