Unfair dismissal claims face five-year delay as tribunal backlog grows

Catriona's loss is exceptional - but the legal limbo she is experiencing is not.

The latest figures show that there is now a backlog of almost 72,000 claims before the Employment Tribunal - up almost 26,000 in a year.

In practical terms, say expert lawyers in the field, unfair dismissal claims being lodged now may not go to a full court hearing for five years.

That's tens of thousands of lives on hold - and businesses that cannot put a case behind them either.

The Employment Lawyers' Association (ELA) is now calling on the government to take radical steps to turn around the enormous backlogs.

"The system isn't coping at the moment, and it's only going to get worse in the future," says Caspar Glynn KC, the chair of the ELA.

"Normally in an employment tribunal, the worker has been dismissed, they have no income, they have nothing to live on, and a delay of five years is effectively economic servitude for that person."

Workers are not the only losers, he says. Firms who may have a solid case to defend themselves find it harder to do so because delays mean people leave their company and, on occasion, a key witness may have even died.

"We have examples of cases where a case has been struck out [because] the judge has said it's no longer possible to have a fair trial. My real concern is whether cases are going to be struck out because of the delays themselves."

The reasons for the delays in the Employment Tribunal are complicated.

There has been a rise in complex discrimination and whistleblowing claims. Many of these take a long time to hear in court.

But there is also a twist in the tale caused by the very tool that you might think would speed things up: Artificial Intelligence.

Many people seeking redress for alleged unfair dismissal go to court as "litigants in person" because they cannot get legal aid to pay for a professional lawyer.

That enormously slows down the proceedings - and self-represented people are turning to AI for help.

"What we're now finding is that a litigant in person, unsure of their rights because no-one's helping them, goes to the internet and inputs it into an AI service," says Glynn.

"They then get a voluminous case, bringing up every single possible claim there is, and every single fact that could possibly be in the person's favour, and indeed sometimes also imagining those rights.

"Now you have claims, which used to be, say, one or two pages long, that are now 30 to 40 pages long."

And every time this happens the delays get longer because judges need more and more time to consider the claims being submitted to them.

The ELA is recommending a new dispute resolution body to cut the number of workplace disputes going to court.

It wants the tribunal service to start using an AI model to evaluate claims, rather than expand them, and to split the caseload into different "tracks" depending on their complexity and their value.

Simple claims could be handled by a legal officer of the court, rather than a judge - vastly cutting the time and expense.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "We recognise the pressures on Employment Tribunals and we're taking action to bring down the backlog, drive efficiencies and ensure swifter justice.

"That includes maximising sitting days, recruiting more employment judges, using virtual hearings where appropriate, and investing in new digital systems."

Whatever the government does, Catriona remains stuck for now.

"There's a big expense to me personally, continuing with this," she says. "I could easily end it. I could easily withdraw the claim. But there's an amount of pressure to do it for Lewis on his behalf.

"He certainly wouldn't want me suffering the way I am because of this process, but equally he would want some accountability."