The report, Justice Denied (on the Citizens Advice Bureau website), says that around 1,500 of the estimated 15,000 successful claimants each year find that their employer simply fails to pay up. Although there are sometimes genuine business reasons for this (for example, insolvency), in many cases the non-payment of the award is deliberate, as "rogue employers know that they can ignore a tribunal judgment and any award with near impunity".

The Citizens Advice Bureau lays the blame squarely on the lack of powers for employment tribunals to enforce their decisions, with claimants forced to take "bewilderingly complex and costly" legal action in the civil courts.

It recommends the introduction of state-led enforcement of unpaid awards, with a tentative estimate that the mere existence of such a scheme would act as a deterrent to reduce the number of awards that go unpaid by one-third, while enforcement action might be successful in another third of the cases.