To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the current average waiting times are for the (a) first hearing date in an employment tribunal claim and (b) publication of the judgment.
Answered on
12 January 2022
(a) The most current information on waiting times to first hearing is set out in the table below.
(b) We aim to work within the general correspondence targets and upload judgments to the public register within 10 working days of promulgation.
Period | The average time (in days) from receipt to first hearing | The average time (weeks) from receipt to first hearing | |||||
Single Claims 1 | Multiple Claims 2 | All Claims | Single Claims 1 | Multiple Claims 2 | All Claims | ||
1st April 2020 - 31st March 2021 | 335 | 388 | 340 | 48 | 55 | 49 | |
Notes relating to the above data | |||||||
1 Single claims are made by a sole employee/worker, relating to alleged breaches of employment rights
2 Multiple claims are where two or more people bring proceedings arising out of the same facts, usually against a common employer. In this instance the lead multiple claim would be listed for hearing.
Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over time. Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics.
The data provided is the most recent available and for that reason might differ from any previously published information.
Data has not been cross referenced with case files.
Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.
Published statistics can be found on www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tribunal-statistics-quarterly-january-to-march-2020 and information on Employment Tribunal outcomes can be found on www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions.
Published Management Information (used by HMCTS for understanding workload volumes and timeliness at a national level during COVID-19): HMCTS weekly management information during coronavirus - March 2020 to May 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
The most recent Employment Tribunal data covers the period up to March 2021. This is because the Employment Tribunal has moved to a new case management system and HMCTS is currently working to incorporate the new IT system alongside longer-established data sources to provide a more complete and consistent data set for this jurisdiction.