Tribunal fees are “barrier to justice”
Since 2013 anyone who has needed to make a claim in the Employment Tribunal has had to pay a fee and another much higher fee to have their claim actually listed for a hearing. The result has been a very large (70%) fall in the number of applicants.
Responding to wide concern about this the House of Commons Justice Committee is holding an enquiry. Citizens Advice Reigate & Banstead along with colleagues in other offices has contributed to evidence sent to the committee by national Citizens Advice.
The evidence suggests that the introduction of ET fees has acted as a barrier to access to justice for workers whose employment disputes cannot be resolved by non-judicial means.
Citizens Advice recommends that:
- Hearing fees should be reduced to a lower level to make them a low cost and affordable way of resolving employment disputes where conciliation has failed.
- If fees are to remain at current levels for complex cases, they should be lower for low value, simple claims such as non-payment of wages and other statutory amounts
- Alternatively, there should be non-tribunal procedures for resolving low value or simple claims
- Regardless, fees should be waived in cases where employees are required to obtain a tribunal judgment against employers who are not formally insolvent in order to obtain a redundancy payment from the Insolvency Service, or the law should allow for the reimbursement of those fees by the Insolvency Service; or the requirement to obtain a tribunal judgment should be removed in these cases
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