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Policy Issues : Employment
30. We reported last year on our first impressions of the operation of the Employment Tribunals' new rules, procedures and forms, which came into effect in October 2004, and specifically whether they were achieving the original policy intention of simplifying the system. At our visits to observe appeal hearings during the past year our members have reported that the tribunals (and users and their representatives) are still getting to grips with the new rules, as well as with a substantial volume of new discrimination legislation. Our members have noted a particular problem pertaining to the high numbers of claims that are rejected at the outset for failure to follow mandatory internal grievance procedures, the vast majority of which do not subsequently come back to the tribunal. Whilst many such cases may well have been resolved satisfactorily at the earlier grievance stage, there may be many applicants who have simply given up in frustration. This matter warrants further investigation. Many claims are also being rejected for failure on the part of applicants to complete the application form accurately, which we flagged up last year as a potential problem. There are also continued reports of problems with the use of on-line forms, whose introduction was initially delayed because of technical difficulties.31. We note that the Department of Trade and Industry is embarking on a review of the new dispute resolution regulations, to which we look forward to contributing.
32. One of our members attended a meeting of the Employment Tribunals' East Midlands user group and reported on a constructive and wide-ranging discussion covering issues such as caseloads, achievement of targets, the operation of case management orders, judicial resources, premises and the new case flow management system. We hope to attend more of these events in the future.
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