Review of Employment Tribunal Fees

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has published the long-awaited implementation review of the introduction of fees in the employment tribunal and EAT.

The introduction of tribunal fees coincided with a significant reduction in the number of tribunal claims being lodged, nationwide.  In some regions, the number of claims lodged dropped by over 70%.  Despite this and Unison’s challenge to the fees, the MoJ’s conclusion is that that there has been no such detrimental impact on access to justice and that the introduction of fees is working well to meet the objectives of transferring a proportion of the cost from taxpayers to users and encouraging greater use of the Acas conciliation service.

There is no suggestion that fees will be lowered or removed as a result of the review. The MoJ has suggested that the best way to deal with any perceived detrimental impact on access to justice brought about by the introduction of fees is to widen access to the help with fees scheme. Consultation around widening access to help with the employment tribunal fees remission scheme is ongoing and is due to close on 14 March 2017. We’ll keep you posted.

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