What to Do If You Receive Notice of an Employment Tribunal

What to Do If You Receive Notice of an Employment Tribunal

By Kathy Trist

If you are a business owner, then at some point, you may receive notice of an employment tribunal. This could be in respect of a range of issues, such as unfair dismissal, discrimination, harassment or bullying. If you are given notice of a tribunal hearing it means that an employee has asked the tribunal to look at their case and make a ruling.

Understanding the process and what to expect next can help you manage the situation and ensure that you secure the best possible outcome.

Early conciliation

The employee is required to consider using the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service’s (ACAS) early conciliation service to try and find a solution. If they agree to this, you will be contacted by ACAS.

If a solution cannot be found or either party does not wish to use the early conciliation service, then ACAS will issue the employee with an early conciliation certificate confirming that they can proceed to an employment tribunal.

Notice of a claim and your response

You will receive a notice of the claim and Response pack from the tribunal. A response form needs to be completed and returned. This can either be done online or by using the paper form provided in the response pack. You are strongly advised to speak to a solicitor before returning the form. Your response must be received within 28 days.

Relevant documents that you may want to refer to in the case should be noted in the response form.

If you receive a response pack, we can check the details on your behalf to see whether there are any valid arguments to defend the claim. For example, there are time limits in which claims should be made. If the employee is complaining of unfair dismissal, they have three months less one day from the date of their dismissal in which to start the claim.

You may also want to make a counterclaim against the employee and this should be considered at this stage.

We will also look at whether it would be appropriate to issue a warning as to costs to the employee.

Copies of all forms sent to the tribunal should be made available to the employee or their legal representative.

Preliminary hearing

Once you have responded, you can expect to receive a notice of a preliminary hearing. In the meantime, you should start putting together evidence of what has happened. We can work with you to advise on the evidence, both documentary and witness evidence, you will need to produce to stand the best prospects of success.

The preliminary hearing enables the tribunal to give details about how long it believes the hearing will be and what information needs to be provided for a final hearing to take place.

Prior to the hearing, you will be ordered to disclose relevant documents and exchange written statements with the opponent usually done by your solicitors.

You also need to make sure that any witnesses that you are relying on will be able to attend.

Tribunal hearing

At the hearing, you can be represented by your solicitor. Evidence will be presented and you and your witnesses can give evidence in person and be questioned by the other side.

The tribunal will usually write to you with their decision at a later date. If you feel that your employee’s case or their conduct was unreasonable, you may be able to ask for your costs to be paid by them.

If you are not successful and you believe that the tribunal made a mistake or you have new evidence, you can ask for the decision to be reconsidered. If you believe that the tribunal made a mistake in law, then you can appeal to the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Contact us

If you would like to speak to one of our expert employment lawyers contact Kathy Trist on 01392 848922 or email kathy.trist@everys.co.uk