Government to Reduce Number of Employment Tribunals

by Alex Wright - Legal Associate

31 January 2011, filed under Employment

The Government has unveiled plans to take away the right of employees who have worked for one year alone to make dismissal claims thought to be unfair. Employment Tribunals will have to sit with only one judge and could well be charging the claimants to make their claim.

It has also been said that there will be new plans to change the way that the workforce can make their claims which will also enable the claims to go into arbitration to settle the dispute, before the tribunal will hear them, to try and encourage the reduction of unnecessary claims, which totaled 23,000 which had been processed just last year.

This will mean that any employees will lose the right to make a claim for unfair dismissal after working for their place of employment for a year. Their right will change so that they only gain that right after working for two years under the latest government plans. The Government is estimating that they can reduce the number of claims by up to 4,700 just through this new plan.

The new plans, which will be under consultation until the middle of April this year, state that all claims for employment will have to recorded first with a mediation service ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service).

Also in these new plans, the Government has made it clear that their mission is to drastically speed up the tribunal process by ensuring the numbers of categories in these cases grow, so the cases in question only need to be heard by a single judge.

As well as these new plans, the Government has also put into publication a document called the ‘employer’s charter’ to try and give employers clear guidelines on the responsibilities they have to hold and stick to, and to help counter the impression that the new employment plans, only favour the employee.

The consultation will enforce certain financial penalties for working establishments who breach their worker’s rights. Hoping this will encourage more employers to be compliant and reduce the actual number of cases brought forward for a tribunal.

The announcement of these plans comes just weeks after the announcement of the abolishment of an official retirement age.