"Equivalent claim" construed

In Howard v Ministry of Defence (13 July 1995) EOR64E, the EAT holds that the exclusion from the temporal limitation imposed by the European Court on the Barber decision for those who had made a claim "equivalent" to legal proceedings, is restricted to where a dispute has been raised before an independent third party with power to determine the dispute conclusively, such as an administrative or arbitration tribunal, and does not extend to a person who only asserts a claim.