Pearson & associates

Proposed employment tribunal changes have been slammed by the TUC as 'chequebook justice' (take a look at the news article on Personnel Today), but we think there's another side to this story. The current system has often left small business owners vulnerable to spurious claims from employees.

Now don't get us wrong, we think it's vital protection is in place for employees who have genuine cases. Employees should be treated fairly and employers have a responsibility and duty to ensure this happens.

However, as the current system is at present there is no cost incurred by a disgruntled employee who wants to take a trip to a tribunal, even when there's no real substance to the claim. Many of these claims are thrown out at a pre-hearing, however many go through to a full tribunal. In 2010/2011 there were 218,100 claims to employment tribunals, which is a 44% increase on 2008/2009 figures. The surprising part of this is that these are funded entirely by the UK taxpayer, currently costing £84 million per year.

The Government is consulting on different strategies to address this, one of which is the idea of having set fees to lodge a claim, with the idea being only genuine claims would be put forward. Clearly there are lots of considerations that would need to be addressed to ensure the system still supports employees in making genuine claims. But it's a good starting point to get discussions going about addressing the current system, which is unfair to small business owners, who can find themselves facing time out of work and associated costs in dealing with malicious claims.

We'll watch with interest what happens through the consultation stage and will keep you informed.