Your employer’s legal obligations when you file a tribunal claim

If you have decided to take your employer to a Tribunal - or you’re just thinking about it - it’s important to understand what you can expect from your employer during the process.

Have you gone through the correct process?

In most cases, if you’re unhappy with a situation at work and want to make a Tribunal claim, you should follow your employer’s internal procedures first. A lot of the time, this means you need to raise a formal grievance before proceeding to Tribunal.

• How to raise a grievance
• What are my employer’s obligations when I have a grievance?

If you are unhappy with the outcome of your grievance, you can appeal the decision or you can move on to ACAS early conciliation. 

If you do not resolve your issues at early conciliation, ACAS will give you a certificate number for your Employment Tribunal claim form (ET1). This claim form is where you should outline the details of your claim against your employer.

What your employer must do after you’ve submitted the ET1

Respond to your claim

Once you submit your ET1 form, your employer is legally required to respond to your claim within 28 days, or they can ask for an extension. To respond to your claim, your employer must complete and submit an ET3 response form to the Tribunal. You will receive a copy via letter or email.

If you do not receive a response from your employer by the deadline, you should follow up with the Tribunal. It is the Tribunal's responsibility to contact your employer regarding their lack of response. 

If your employer doesn’t respond to your claim, you can ask the Tribunal to make a judgment based on Rule 21 from the Rules of Procedure.

Co-operate with you at the Preliminary Hearings

Once your employer submits the ET3, the Tribunal will give you a copy of it and tell you what to do next. For a lot of cases, you will get a date for a Preliminary Hearing. In this hearing, the Tribunal sets out the timetable of the case and any details of the case that need discussing. If you have a complicated case, there may be more than one Preliminary Hearing.

Before the first Preliminary Hearing, you and your employer should try to agree dates for key events, for example when to:

• send Disclosure Documents
• exchange Witness Statements
• agree which documents the Tribunal will use as evidence (Hearing Bundle) 
• hold the Final Hearing

Some of the dates, for example when to hold the Final Hearing, will depend on the availability of the Tribunal. 

At the Preliminary Hearing, the Judge will confirm the key dates by giving Case Management Orders (formal instructions given by the Tribunal). They will usually follow up in writing to confirm these, but this might take a while, so it’s worth taking notes during the hearing or asking a friend to.

Comply with the Case Management Orders

The Judge will give Case Management Orders at the Preliminary Hearing and throughout the case. These are formal instructions given by the Tribunal. For example, you may be asked to:

• prepare witness statements
• exchange documents
• create a schedule of loss

Both you and your employer need to comply with the Case Management Orders as requested and on time. If your employer misses a deadline, they risk their response being “struck out” - if this happens then you could win your case without going to a Final Hearing.

Both you and your employer can apply for an extension if you need more time.

Give you the documents you requested

In most cases, the Tribunal will make an order that asks you and your employer to give each other any documents that are relevant to the case. The Case Management Orders will explain exactly what you need to send to each other. 

Disclosure Documents may include:

• emails or chat transcripts
• meeting notes or documents
• calendar entries
• phone recordings / transcripts

Give you visibility of all communications to the Tribunal

You and your employer must copy each other into communications to the Employment Tribunal, for example a request for an extension to a deadline. This is to ensure that all parties are fully informed and there are no surprises or misunderstandings during the process.

Agree the Hearing Bundle

Before your Tribunal hearing, you and your employer must agree which documents will be used as evidence. This is called the "Hearing Bundle" and it can be hundreds of pages long. You, your employer, the witnesses, and the Tribunal judge/panel will all work from these documents during the hearing.

The Hearing Bundle should include all of the documents that were shared at the Disclosure stage, which both you and your employer agree are relevant to the issues in the case.

The Hearing Bundle should include an index with a list of all the documents in chronological order.

Comply with the Tribunal order if you win your case or appeal

If you win your case, the Tribunal might take a break to see if you and your employer can agree on a remedy, or the Tribunal may stipulate an order at the final hearing or in a separate Remedy Hearing.

What is a remedy?

A remedy is the compensation awarded if your claim is successful. This typically consists of financial compensation but it can also include non-monetary remedies, for example having your employer reinstate you.

If your employer does not pay the compensation that you are due, visit Gov.uk for guidance on how to force payment from your employer. Your employer can be fined if they do not pay. 

Be aware that your employer could appeal the decision made against them, in which case they won’t need to comply with remedy orders straight away. 

Co-operate with the appeal process if you lose

If you lose your case, you can apply to the Employment Appeal Tribunal for an appeal within 42 days. 

If you appeal, your employer must follow the Employment Appeal Tribunal orders for that process.

Get your evidence in order

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