Employment Tribunals

1. TERMS OF REFERENCE
1.1 The Employment Tribunal System was intended to be “cheap, speedy and informal”. Discuss the problems the Tribunal system has faced and whether the reforms introduced from 2001 will resolve the problems.
2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Industrial Tribunals, as Employment Tribunals were then called were created by the Industrial Training Act 1964, not, as commonly held, by the Donovan Report of 1968. Their initial function was to hear appeals from assessment to training levy under the 1964 Act; determine entitlement to a redundancy payment; to resolve disputes over the failure to provide a written statement of terms and conditions of employment; and hear certain appeals under the Selective Employment Payments Act 1966. Legal representation was unusual and appeals rare. Neither the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) nor its predecessor, the National Industrial Relations Court, existed.
2.2 Since Donovan however, the workload of tribunals has incr...