Fiona Hume, Astle Paterson’s Employment specialist, discusses further recent changes in employment law.
Employees may be put off bringing a claim at an Employment Tribunal due to the new fees to be paid. An employee who brings a claim for unfair dismissal will have to pay a fee of £250.00 when filing the claim form and will also have to pay a fee of £950.00 should the matter proceed to a final hearing.
A new ET1 form is to be used to make a claim at Employment Tribunal and claimants must set out the financial compensation sought together with a calculation.
There is also a new ET3 response form
A new stage in Tribunal proceedings has been introduced – an Initial Paper Sift. The objective of this stage is to identify claims or responses which are weak and which should not proceed to hearing.
If the view of the Employment Tribunal is that the claim or defence should not proceed, the Employment Judge can strike out the claim or strike out the response for lack of reasonable prospects of success or for being outside of the Tribunal’s jurisdiction.
The position as to costs has been slightly altered; Costs will now be awarded where a ‘party has acted vexatiously, abusively, disruptively, or otherwise unreasonably in either the bringing of the proceedings or the way that the proceedings have been conducted’ or ‘any claim or response had no reasonable prospect of success’.
Please contact Fiona Hume of Astle Paterson (Solicitors in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire) on 01283 531366 or by way of email to fhume@astlepaterson.co.uk
