Employment Tribunal in United Kingdom

Definition of Employment Tribunal

In accordance with the work A Dictionary of Law, this is a description of Employment Tribunal : (ET)

Any of the bodies established under the employment protection legislation, consolidated by the Employment (formerly Industrial) Tribunals Act 1996, to hear and rule on certain disputes between employers and employees or trade unions relating to statutory terms and conditions of employment. (Originally called industrial tribunals, they (and the 1996 Act) were renamed under the Employment Rights (Dispute Resolution) Act 1998.) The tribunals hear, inter alia, complaints concerning *unfair dismissal, *redundancy, *equal pay, *maternity rights, and complaints of unlawful deductions from wages under the Employment Rights Act 1996 (Part II). Tribunals sit in local centres in public and usually consist of a legally qualified chairman and two independent laymen, although chairmen are permitted to sit alone, without lay members, for certain types of case (e.g. deductions from wages claims), cases where the parties agree in writing, and uncontested cases. An ET differs from a civil court in that it cannot . enforce its own awards (this must be done by separate application to a court) and It can conduct its proceedings informally. Strict rules of evidence need not apply and the parties can present their own case or be represented by anyone they wish at their own expense. The tribunal has wide powers to declare a dismissal unfair and to award *compensation, which is the usual remedy, but they also have power to order the *reinstatement or *re-engagement of a dismissed employee.

In cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct employment tribunals are empowered to make a restricted reporting order, which prevents identification of anyone pursuing or affected by the allegations until the tribunal’s decision is promulgated. There is also a power to remove identifying information in such cases from the decisions and other public documents.

Before conducting a full hearing of the case, the tribunal may consider (on either party’s application or on its own initiative) what the parties have said in the written complaint to the tribunal (the originating application) and the answer to it (the notice of appearance) in a prehearing assessment. If this assessment suggests that either party is unlikely to succeed, the tribunal may warn that party that he may be ordered to pay the other’s costs if he insists on pursuing his case to a full hearing. When a full hearing takes place, the tribunal will not award costs to the. successful party unless the other has been warned of this likelihood at a prehearing assessment or has acted vexatiously, frivolously, or unreasonably in bringing or defending the proceedings. An appeal on a point of law arising from any decision on an ET may be heard by the *Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Resources

See Also

Further Reading

• Employment Tribunal in the Encyclopedia of Britain
• Employment Tribunal in the Osborn’s Concise Law Dictionary
• Employment Tribunal in the Halsbury’s Laws of England
• Employment Tribunal in the Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases
• Employment Tribunal in the Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law
• Employment Tribunal in the New Oxford Companion to Law
• Employment Tribunal in the Words and Phrases Legally Defined
• Employment Tribunal in the Oxford Dictionary of Law

The Employment Tribunal

Name

The Employment Tribunal is the standarized name of one of the UK Tribunals and Government Offices (see the entries in this legal Encyclopedia about court rules and procedural law for more information on some aspects of the Employment Tribunal in the UK). [rtbs name=”courts”]