According to Government data, in the 3 months since Tribunal fees were abolished in July, the number of claims have risen by 66 percent – one of the strongest indicators that introducing fees for Employment Tribunals was discouraging employees from making claims.

Following a Supreme Court ruling that said the Government was acting unlawfully to introduce them, the Ministry of Justice “took immediate steps” to stop charging fees for tribunals and also rolled out a fee refund scheme for claimants who had paid fees between 2013 and 2017. Individuals who paid tribunal fees between these dates can apply to be reimbursed and it is estimated that 100,000 claims are eligible for a refund, which could cost up to £27m.

The newly released statistics show that the number of single claims for individual grievances such as unfair or wrongful dismissal increased dramatically, with claims for unlawful deductions from wages, for example, now re-emerging from a low of 549 in July 2017 to a high of 2926 claims in August 2017. It is thought that many workers found the cost of bringing a claim for something such as underpaid holiday often exceeded the amount being disputed and therefore did not proceed.

However, whilst single claims appear to be on the increase, multiple tribunal claims fell to 23,297 which is a decrease of 15 per cent over the same period as last year. Experts have reasoned that this could be because during the period when fees were charged, it was cheaper to work as a group, rather than bring a single claim, which would seem to be borne out by the recent rise in single claims.

Obviously these figures only reflect the very recent trend and experts have said that more figures would be needed before they could tell whether this is the new norm.