Annual Tribunal Statistics Published

The annual statistics for the Employment Tribunal and EAT for the twelve months to 31 March 2010 have been published - and, as ever, they make for interesting reading. We've had a look at them so you don't have to, and the main points to note are:

• Employment Tribunal claims rose year on year by 56%. This has been linked to a rise in multiple claims (up by nearly 90%) and the changing economic climate.
• Because of "multiple airline industry cases that are re-submitted every three months", the greatest increases came in working time claims (297%) and claims for unauthorised deductions (122%).
• Claims for breach of contract increased by 29%, for age discrimination by 36% and claims for redundancy payments increased by a whopping 76%.
• 71% of equal pay claims and 57% of sex discrimination claims do not make it to a tribunal hearing, making them the claims most likely to be withdrawn.
• The claim most likely to be settled via ACAS conciliation is disability discrimination (45%).
• The claim that is most likely to be successful at tribunal is a claim for redundancy pay (24% of which were successful).

A question we're always asked by parties to a tribunal claim is "how much am I/they going to get?". There's inevitably a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string element to any answer you can give, but we can say what the mean/median and maximum amount of any award was for any particular claim. And they are:

• Unfair dismissal: £9,120 (mean), £4,903 (median), £234,549 (maximum);
• Race discrimination: £18,584, £5,392, £374,922;
• Sex discrimination: £19,499, £6,275, £442,366;
• Disability discrimination: £52,087, £8,553, £729,347;
• Religious discrimination: £4,886, £5,000, £9,500;
• Sexual orientation discrimination: £20,384, £5,000, £163,725;
• Age discrimination: £10,931, £5,868, £48,710.

If you want to see all of the statistics in detail, the report is available to download here.