Do you know how many disability discrimination claims were brought in 2007/08? Or the average age discrimination award in that period? How about the number of unfair dismissal cases where more than £50,000 compensation was awarded?
No? Well, you’re not the only one. Mid way through December, the Employment Tribunals Service still has not published its figures for the period from 1 April 2007 to 31 April 2008. And the best indication they seem able to give of a publication date is that it “should be” next January or February.
The Employment Tribunals Service used to publish its own annual report and accounts in July. However, this changed in 2007, when the new unified Tribunals Service began publishing one July annual report and accounts covering the different tribunals. Unfortunately, the information that this provides about our area of interest, the employment tribunals, is minimal. We know that, in 2007/08, the number of employment tribunal claims received was 189,348 - up from 143,474 the previous year - and that the number of claims disposed of fell from 107,412 in 2006/07 to 86,237 in 2007/08 - but that’s about it.
In 2007, responding to requests from, among others, IRS managing editor Mark Crail, the Employment Tribunals Service published a separate document giving more detail on the 2006/07 figures (PDF format, 209K) (on the Employment Tribunals Service website) in September. However, despite repeated requests during 2008 for the relevant figures from last year, no figures for 2007/08 have been forthcoming. What do they have to hide, we wonder.
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Comments (1)
The public has a right to know what is prompting so many people to bring cases to employment tribunals and how these claims are being dealt with. As far as I am aware, there is no other source for this information, which takes the data issued by the advisory service ACAS each year one step further.
Unless the Tribunals Service can give a good reason why it delayed publishing the data in July until pestered to do so and why it still refuses to publish the data this year, the only possible conclusion can be that it does not believe the public have a legitimate interest in the operation of a significant branch of the legal system - and that strikes me as dangerous.
The Tribunals Service needs to be called to account for its actions (or lack of them).
Posted by mark | December 18, 2008 4:24 PM
Posted on December 18, 2008 16:24